The State of Public Trust in Higher Education: Insights from Gallup-Lumina Foundation:

Changing Higher Ed® podcast 255 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dr. Courtney Brown

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast  – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

Welcome to Changing Higher Ed^®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Welcome

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. Today I get the privilege of welcoming back, Dr. Courtney Brown, Vice President of Impact and Planning for Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation located in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all.

As Lumina’s Chief Data and Research Officer, Courtney oversees the foundation’s efforts in the area of strategic planning, learning, impact, and effectiveness. She also leads Lumina’s international engagement process. Needless to say, Courtney’s an expert when it comes to post-secondary education and evidence-based practices, and she joins me today to talk about the reality of higher education’s loss of public confidence, not just what the media’s saying and amplifying, but what’s really going on, as well as Lumina Foundation’s new national goal of 75% college and certificate attainment, something critical to supporting a true democracy.

Courtney, welcome back to the program. I’m looking forward to our conversation. There’s so much going on right now and I’m really excited about some of the news coming outta Lumina, which you’re gonna share with us today. But before we do that, for those who don’t know you, give us a little of your background please.

[00:01:46] Dr. Courtney Brown’s Background and Role at Lumina Foundation

Courtney Brown: Sure. So again, my name is Courtney Brown and I’m at Lumina Foundation. I’m the Vice President of Strategic Impact and Planning there and I’ve been at Lumina for about 14 years. It’s a privilege to be able to do the work that we do every day. Before that I was research faculty. I actually did research and evaluation in higher ed, and so it lent itself well moving into Lumina.

And before that I studied some things in college and grad school, like Spanish and International Affairs, and I even have a master’s in linguistics, which all seem, unrelated, but they really come together and help me unravel data and think about how things connect.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, you’re part of that 1% that many folks say has been able to leverage a liberal arts background. I think you’ve done it very well. I’m being facetious, but…

Courtney Brown: Right. Right, because most people with a liberal arts background do very well long term, so.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, they do. I think frankly, they do better than, folks in the STEM background on a long-term career perspective. But that’s a conversation for a different kettle of fish. Sorry, mixing metaphors. It’s been one of those days for me today, so.

Courtney Brown: I understand.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah.

[00:02:59] What Are Lumina Foundation’s Mission and Goals?

Drumm McNaughton: So tell us a little bit about Lumina, if you would, because you guys are one of the premier institutions in the US as far as higher education and what’s going on.

Courtney Brown: Yeah, so Lumina, is a national, private foundation. We are based in Indianapolis, but we are national and in what we do. Lumina’s been around since 2000. And since 2008, we’ve really been focused on increasing attainment for all Americans in the US. And we’ve really been focused on a goal, a 2025 goal, and that goal was by 2025, 60% of people in the workforce, those 25 to 64, would have a degree or other credential of value.

So that, that’s what our work is really about and continues to be about. Although we’ll have a new goal I’m gonna talk to you about, but really leaning in on ensuring that more people have access and can succeed in getting a quality credential.

Drumm McNaughton: And how does Lumina do that type of thing? How do they get people to be more engaged, to be able to lean in?

Courtney Brown: Yeah, great question. Well, one of the things we don’t do is we don’t provide scholarships. We really are focused on systemic, sustainable reforms to ensure that more people have access.

Scholarships are great, but we just can’t reach scale with those, and so we focus on a lot of research, what are some of the best practices and policies, and then helping institutions pilot those, take those on, create more research, and really mobilize more people to take these on.

One of the examples from our work over the last 15 years is, so in 2008, Lumina set a goal for the nation, it’s a nation’s goal, this 2025, 60% goal that I mentioned. And when we set the goal, only one state had a similar goal and that was actually Hawaii. Over the course of the 15 years, 49 states set similar goals around attainment.

So we try to like come up with these ideas based in policy and practice and mobilize more people to take them on and take them on for what matters to them. So that’s how we do some of this work.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s fascinating because in some ways you’re a cheerleader, but you’re providing them the necessary research, the necessary best practices so that they can get these attainments.

Courtney Brown: Absolutely. And we focus on things, obviously we talked about research and data and evaluation, but we also think about two-year institutions, community college and technical institutions, four year universities, as well as workforce programs, because we believe all credentials of value after high school matter.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s fascinating. And you partner with institutions like Gallup to conduct your research, correct.

Courtney Brown: Absolutely. Yeah. We really wanna understand what people are saying. What are their perceptions, what are the barriers they’re having? So, we’ve been working in partnership with Gallup almost the whole time that I’ve been at Lumina. And over the last five years, we really developed an even deeper relationship. Coming out of the pandemic, or actually during the pandemic, is when we really started to say, we have to better understand what is happening with people in the US, both people that are currently in college, people not in college, people who stopped out and understand what’s going on”. And only by understanding that can we start to work on increasing their opportunities and removing some of these barriers.

Drumm McNaughton: And that is so critical in today’s day and age.

[00:06:19] Challenges in Higher Education and Lumina’s Approach

Drumm McNaughton: Now, Lumina was one of the folks to start talking about a loss of confidence in higher education due to cost, political, not aligning with the workforce. We’ve heard the media talking about this significantly, but what’s the reality of all this?

Courtney Brown: You’re absolutely right. So, Gallup, actually, independently of us, over the last decades have been looking at confidence in a number of institutions. We’re talking about small businesses, congress, the Supreme Court, the police force, all kinds of things. And about 10 years ago they added higher education to this. So they’ve been measuring confidence in these institutions.

Courtney Brown: The good news is everyone does better than Congress. They’re the people of the least confidence in them.

[00:07:08] The State of Public Confidence in Higher Education

Courtney Brown: But one of the concerning things that I saw in their data was that when they first started doing this in 2015, over 60% of people had a great deal of confidence in higher education, high, great deal of confidence.

And then last year in actually the 2023 data, I noticed that dropped significantly, to just about a third of Americans having a great deal of confidence. And so part of our partnership, I think, why are they losing confidence so rapidly? We hear things in the media, but let’s ask the people. And so, in partnering with them, we created some research in digging down and saying, “if you’re losing confidence, why? Why is that? Or if you have a great deal of confidence, why is that”? Like, let’s dig a little bit deeper. And from that, in the 2024 data last summer, we did learn exactly what you said, they’re losing confidence rapidly and, it’s not just the people that had a great deal, that are decreasing. More concerning are the people that have “no confidence” has increased from 10% to a third of all Americans, have no confidence.

Drumm McNaughton: Wow.

Courtney Brown: What we learned are exactly what you said. That first of all, they’re afraid it’s become too political. There are, protests and other things going on, and that people don’t feel comfortable sharing their ideas. The second one was that it’s not aligned with the workforce. People feel like there’s no ROI here, like I am not confident that I’m gonna leave with the degree that’s going to get me a job.

And the third is, as everybody knows, it’s not affordable. So these are the three things that people are really concerned about and the reason they’re losing confidence.

[00:08:38] The Economic Value of Higher Education

Drumm McNaughton: And some of those, just at face value, I personally, when I hear it, I go, “Well, that’s not true. There’s a great ROI”, I’m kind of at a loss for words with this one.

Courtney Brown: Yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: There is a good return, especially if you look over someone’s career. It’s a two to three times higher the earnings over someone’s lifetime than it would be for someone who didn’t have a college degree or something else. Am I right?

Courtney Brown: Absolutely. And as a data person also, I love to size those statistics. You’ll make more than a million dollars over the course of your lifetime than with a high school degree alone. You’re more likely to be healthy, you’re more likely to have a job that you find purpose in. You’re more likely to be, civically engaged.

All of these things, we’ve got tons of data on it, but the reality is that this is not people’s experiences. They are encountering all these barriers. It’s not affordable. They’re hard pressed to be going to college and have a job at the same time. So they’re encountering all these realities in their lives.

And so I realized that for me, constantly yelling, “no, no, it’s still good. You should do it. Sacrifice. You don’t need food on your table. College degree is gonna pay off…” isn’t helping.

And so we need to listen better to what people are saying and actually show them that we understand and make some changes. Because while we have the data that show you do make more over the course of your lifetime and you’re gonna be healthier and all these things, there are challenges. It isn’t affordable anymore. It is challenging with the changing workforce that people need to make sure they’re getting a good, valuable credential.

And you know what we learned in a recent Gallup Lumina, report and we put out a state of higher education report, and this one was really about cost and value. And so we have this, almost this paradox between cost and value.

So most Americans believe college is too expensive, right? They believe it’s too expensive. But they also know they need it for career success. So the problem is they value the credential. They’re not trusting that the system can provide what they need. And so we have this paradox that we kind of need to dig a little bit deeper and solve some of this problem.

Drumm McNaughton: That is an interesting paradox because people need it, they don’t trust the system to give it to them, it’s too expensive and a couple of other things.

Life is far more complex than it used to be. And this generation coming up that, forget about the enrollment cliff or the demographic cliff that’s coming up, people coming in, this generation coming up is debt adverse. They can’t see getting themselves into a lot of debt, spending the money that’s necessary, and frankly, they don’t necessarily have the time because they have to go to work, et cetera. Does that make sense?

Courtney Brown: Today’s students are more likely to be older, they’re more likely to have dependents, so they have children of their own. They need to put food on the table or pay for childcare. You know, a flat tire can dismantle their road to getting their credential. So, there’s a lot of things they’re trying to balance at the same time, but they still want it, they still want that credential and they just can’t access it.

We found that 70% of adults that don’t have a degree, see a bachelor’s degree as valuable. 55% saved for an associates. So people see this as valuable. But they’re concerned that the price isn’t fair.

Less than 20% of people think a four-year degree price is fair or tuition cost is fair. But on the other hand, the vast majority, almost 90% of adults believe that the college education, what they pay, will pay off within 10 years. And almost 60% believe it’ll pay off in just five years. So, they know it’s gonna pay off, they just don’t have the resources to even put into it to see that payoff.

Drumm McNaughton: And when you say resources, it’s not only the money, but it’s also the time.

Courtney Brown: It’s the time, it is the tuition, it is the opportunity cost for not having a job at the same time or only being able to work part-time. It is having food on the table, it’s rent. All of these things that people are saddled with and trying to go to get their credential at the same time.

Drumm McNaughton: You said something earlier that really struck me. It says, people don’t trust the current system to deliver the education that they need. Why is that?

Courtney Brown: Well, I think that goes back to that confidence. The reason that, a third of Americans have no confidence in higher ed right now, because they don’t believe that it is going to deliver an ROI. They think it’s not affordable, so they’re gonna pay all of this money and then they’re not convinced they’re gonna get a job on the other end.

And up until recently, or maybe even still, coming outta the pandemic, you could get a pretty good paying job without getting a credential. It’s shortsighted. It’s not gonna last very long. But I think people think, okay, so I could work at Walmart and get $25 an hour right now, and so why would I go get a credential where I don’t believe I’m gonna make that much?

Now, you and I both know that those jobs aren’t gonna last that long, that the people don’t find purpose in ’em. That we want people to have good jobs. And we also know that with a degree or credential, they pay off over time. That it, it is quite valuable for an individual. But in the moment, that’s hard to see.

The other problem is people don’t always understand how much it does cost. We all hear about the Vanderbilt and the schools in the northeast that it’s now a hundred thousand dollars a year to go. And they hear it in the media too, right? The media talks about this all the time. Tuition has now reached $100,000. That’s the top line in any news story. They don’t hear that your community college is $5,000 a year. There are other, those other costs you have to incur, rent, all those things we just discussed, but it’s not a hundred thousand dollars a year.

$5,000 is still a lot of money. It is still, you know, to come up with that, it is not easy for many people, but it’s not the hundred thousand dollars.

Drumm McNaughton: No. And so you’re scaring people away right from the beginning without taking a look at discount rates, in-state tuition, all of those things that could help someone get past that hurdle for a minimum amount of debt.

Courtney Brown: Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. And you know what’s interesting is that current students believe that their investment is worth it. Over 90% of Bachelor’s students say, “yeah, this is, this investment in education is worth it. And I believe my program is excellent in aligning the coursework with my career goals”. So people in the system believe it’s paying off. It’s people who either stopped out or have never touched higher ed, who are hearing these stories and are concerned.

Drumm McNaughton: And it’s also very difficult because you’ve got, I’ll go back to the demographic cliff again, you’ve got less, the birth rate was less back in the great recession, 2007, 2009, which is impacting, and it will continue to decrease for a number of years. You’ve got less people coming in. You’ve got people’s perception around debt. That’s a whole kettle of fish to try and get past. And with a lot of the folks coming in that are first gen students, they don’t have the supports necessary to be able to be successful.

Courtney Brown: Right. It can be really confusing to far too many people, and then you’re right. Like we are, each year, kind of now we’re gonna start seeing less and less people that are 18, so the traditional college age. So colleges really need to think about making sure that they’re still addressing those students and finding opportunities for them, but also thinking about the adult students.

 We need to skill reskill or upskill and changing their business models to ensure that we’re educating everyone, not just catering to 18-year-olds, because soon they’re not gonna be enough 18 year olds for everyone to cater to. So they really need to think about that.

And, 18-year-olds even are becoming more savvy consumers. They’re questioning the cost, they’re questioning the value, which is great. There needs to be much more transparency in what a degree or credential is going to cost, what you’re gonna learn, and what kind of jobs can you get on the other end. Because let’s be real, like the days of just going to college to like, sit on a lawn and read poetry and, go work for your parents or whoever, for the rest of your life doesn’t exist anymore. Today’s students are there to get a job, to get a better job or to get a promotion.

Drumm McNaughton: Which is a very different perspective, than folks coming in used to have.

Courtney Brown: Exactly, and that’s why helping people understand who today’s students are and what today’s students want, ’cause we hear over and over again, especially with this Lumina Gallup State of Higher Education data, is that that’s the main reason people are going to pursue a degree. Because they want a job, they want to have a good job and a good life.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, it’s interesting too when you take a look at it through the political lens, many folks are saying that the free speech is not on campuses like it used to be, but yet the data says that most people, 95% think that campuses are doing a great job with free speech. So my sense is it’s a political football that people wanna use to try and get votes.

I don’t know, I dunno if you can comment on that or not, but that’s just my impression.

Courtney Brown: Let me tell you just a little bit about the data. So again, one of the things that we did in this, Lumina Gallup State of Higher Ed was we wanted to find out like what is going on campuses. For current students that are on campuses, what is their experience like? Because we know that the idea of free speech has been a persistent national issue for the last few years, with a lot of these movements really shaping today’s discussions, with shaping the media and what we hear about all the time. And there’s been so many debates, obviously since the response to the Israeli Hamas war. State legislation, limiting divisive concepts, this is all really intensified, the scrutiny on higher ed.

But despite what we’re hearing from the media and their focus on really these high profile incidents, what we learned is that’s very different than what students are experiencing. So most students, three quarters of all students, believe their college promotes free speech well, and that holds across political lines. 73% of Republicans, 74% of Democrats, 75% of independents all agree that their college promotes free speech well. Only about 5% believe it doesn’t do a very good job. And there’s always at least five to 10% of people that don’t think anything’s working.

Drumm McNaughton: That is important to remember because with things as they are right now, your students, your faculty, your staff, those are your primary customers as a higher ed institution, and if they feel that things are going right, don’t make a big deal of it.

Courtney Brown: Yeah. Most students tell us that they feel personally free to express themselves on campus. A little less for Republicans, just under 70% and a little bit more for Democrats at about 77%. But that’s still the vast majority, feel free to express their own views. And so what we’re hearing about these free speech restrictions are not actually matching students’ lived experiences.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you for clearing that up because one of the beauties of my getting to do podcasts is I learn things. And you know, I learn things every day and especially when I do a podcast.

[00:20:15] Lumina’s New Goal: 75% Credential Attainment by 2040

Drumm McNaughton: So, Lumina has a new goal, 75%. Tell me about it, please.

Courtney Brown: So again, because I love data, and I mentioned to you that we have this 2025 goal, the 60% goal by 2025. As you might realize, we’re in 2025 now, and so we’ve been thinking for the last couple years. What do we do now? Where do we need to go next? And what we do is support a national goal.

So, this is not Lumina’s goal, but we wanted to think about what does a nation need and not just what does a nation need today in 2025? What’s it gonna need in 15 years? And so we went back to the data that we just talked about. That people wanna credential, they want a degree.

We went back to data that shows by 2031, data from Georgetown Center on Education in the Workforce, their data says that by 2031, 70% of good jobs are going to require some form of education after high school. So, we know that we need more people with more education after high school for these good jobs.

And then we looked at, so we know we need this, but we paid attention to that data around confidence and what are the issues. And so, while we’ve been talking about, for the most part, on average, bachelor’s degrees pay off, people do make more over their lifetime, but you and I both know that there are programs that may not pay off and are not well aligned with the workforce. They may be old programs that existed, they may be programs that don’t match the workforce now. And so we wanted to really focus on value, and we also understood that, for the public, economic value is the most important. What they wanna see is there’s an ROI, they invest this money and they’re going to have a return on that investment.

And so we know we needed to lean in on economic value.

And so as we thought about this new goal, we know we needed to continue to increase attainment, so we’re not abandoning that, but that’s not enough.

Attainment without value is meaningless. That builds less confidence for Americans. And so our new, the new goal that we’ve set for the nation is really thinking about economic prosperity. And so we launched this new credentials of value, goal and framework connecting educational attainment with economic value. And so our goal is that by 2040, so 15 years, again, 75% of adults in the US labor force will have a college degree or other credential of value leading to economic prosperity.

So again, it’s increasing 75% to have a degree of credential and provide more income, more wages, over a high school degree alone. 15% to be exact. So you have to have both. You have to have that degree or credential and make at least 15% over what a high school degree holder, holds it.

That’s the new goal. That’s what we’re starting and really we’re going, we’re gonna lean our efforts in helping the nation achieve this.

Drumm McNaughton: That is a great goal because, as you say, you’re focusing on attainment, but also on the economic prosperity.

Circling back to the perception issues, does this take care of those perception issues, and /or the actual issues that institutions are facing?

Courtney Brown: So it is setting that north star, it’s setting really like where do we need to go? I call it an imagine future. If we could pick like, what do we need to really think about? We need to think about prosperity. Everyone deserves to have economic prosperity and to do it, you need opportunity. So we need to remove barriers so that everyone has opportunity. Everyone should be able to have stability or security. So they get that credential and then they have economic security. But we really wanted to go a step further and make sure that they have prosperity, good jobs, good lives. Looking back at those issues around confidence, this work will really help us to align the credentials with the workforce, what people were concerned about, they don’t align. We’ve gotta do that to reach this goal, we have to really consider affordability. We need to match, make sure that it is affordable, that it goes again, to add more people, having this opportunity to access and succeed. And in doing those things, we do believe that together with, partners all over the country, that the US can achieve this. 

Drumm McNaughton: One thing that kind of comes to mind is, have you floated these ideas across the country? For example, you know the chief higher education officers at the various states. We’ve got red, we’ve got blue, sometimes the twain will never meet. What do they think?

Courtney Brown: That was really important. As we were thinking about these goals, we actually reached out to people all over the country. Red states, blue states, purple states. We’re not one or the other. We are about the full United States. And we got their ideas and thoughts.

So, we didn’t come up with this in a vacuum, we really talked to the perception data we’ve been talking about with Gallup, but also reaching out to the SHEEOs (State Higher Education Executive Officers) and other leaders in post-secondary education, and naysayers, and said, “what does the country need around higher education,” and this kept coming up, this idea of credentials and value.

And then we came up with where we really thought this national goal needs to be and worked with our board on it. And before we announced it, we reached out to SHEEOs across the country again, red state, blue State, purple states, and this resonated with them.

We told them this is what the goal is, this is what the data look like, for your state, this is where you are. And one after the other agreed that this is exactly what the nation needs right now to really focus on credentials to value and economic prosperity for Americans. So far, we’ve had a really good response to this, but we know that we need everybody at the table to make this a success, and to increase the economic prosperity of our nation.

Drumm McNaughton: And that’s really the bottom line is when the tide goes up, it should float all boats.

Courtney Brown: Absolutely. We wanna make sure everyone, no matter where you live, no matter the color of your skin, no matter the age you’re in, no matter who your parents were, that you have opportunity to have a good job and a good life. And we believe that the key to unlocking that is education beyond high school.

Drumm McNaughton: The land of opportunity, that was what we’ve always been known for.

Courtney Brown: I hope we continue to be known for that. Yes.

Drumm McNaughton: I hope so as well. One last question. What can colleges do to help with this?

[00:26:43] Strategies for Higher Education Institutions

Courtney Brown: Colleges, universities, technical schools, workforce training, all have a role to play in this. And obviously we can’t do it without them, because they’re the ones that provide the credentials. And I would say there are a few things.

One, we have to figure out this affordability piece. We’ve got to make sure we get that, that under control. And so we all need to think about that. Institutions need to think about their business models moving forward and how you make these credentials more affordable.

Second, they need to make it more transparent. It’s confusing to know how much you’re gonna pay, what you’re gonna learn, and what kind of jobs you can get in the future. That’s a responsibility of an institution.

You think about even when you buy a car, and I could probably come up with even a smaller example, but a car, you wanna know, how many miles does it get per gallon? How many people can it fit? How long might I have it? You know, you ask all these questions and car dealers, the people that are selling it to you can answer that.

We don’t ask all those questions about higher ed. We don’t always have all of that data to, to respond to that. But consumers, prospective students, deserve to know that. So we need to really make our system more transparent, so more affordable, more transparent.

We have to better connect to the workforce. We have to say, what are the jobs not up today? Because that’s not gonna help us when people graduate. And then. Their job might go away. What are the jobs going to be up tomorrow? We can’t predict all of them, but we need more people that can be nimble.

We talked about liberal arts at the top of this, really thinking about the humanities and the liberal arts and how important those skills, that critical thinking, that ability to work with other people, those are really important moving forward. So they need to lead in on that.

And the last I would say, we touched a bit about free speech and feeling of belonging. You know what? By and large most people feel like their schools are doing a good job with free speech and they feel comfortable sharing their ideas.

We need to make sure that our institutions continue to be safe places for all perspectives. And that’s the beauty of a college environment is that you get to learn and understand and hear different perspectives, and continuing down that path is really important for all of us to make a better future.

Drumm McNaughton: Truer words could not have been said. I was listening to a friend of mine the other day and we were talking about history degrees, and it says, maybe think about how you’re teaching a history degree. History degree, a lot of times is going in and memorizing dates, what happened, et cetera. Why not look at it from that perspective? But also too, what were the events that happened leading up to that, that caused that, to happen? And then what happened after that that caused major shifts?

Right there you’re talking about critical thinking, analyzing people’s decision making. A whole lot of the other things that you hear from AACNU about what are the critical things from a liberal art education that employers want.

Courtney Brown: Yeah, absolutely.

Drumm McNaughton: So as always, Courtney, it’s been a wonderful conversation. Anything else you wanna add? Anything that’s coming down the pike or that you just have released there at Lumina?

Courtney Brown: We’ve got a lot. We’re trying to wrap our arms around this goal right now and really get that out and share it. We just released it just this year. And so that’s really, we’re gonna focus our efforts. I’m gonna focus my efforts. We have a lot of, as I keep saying, a data person, I’m a data person and so I have to keep thinking about what are better data that we can get to better answer these questions about affordability, ROI and cost. And so those are some things I’m gonna dive deeper into and Lumina will be diving deeper into. That and affordability and all these things we talked about.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, when you’re ready to come back and talk about ’em, you’re always welcome.

Courtney Brown: Well, thank you. I look forward to it.

Drumm McNaughton: I do as well.

[00:30:30] Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

Drumm McNaughton: As we always do, three takeaways for university presidents and boards. 

Courtney Brown: The three takeaways, focus on affordability, focus on transparency, focus on aligning the degrees and credentials you provide with what people want. A good job and a good life.

Drumm McNaughton: Excellent. Those were definitely worth repeating. I knew we’d said ’em before. What’s next for you? What’s next for Lumina?

Courtney Brown: Next for us is, again, diving deep into this goal, getting more people to know about it and building a coalition of the willing. ‘Cause again, this is not Lumina’s goal, this is the national goal, and we need all hands on deck if we’re going to get success.

Drumm McNaughton: Very good. Courtney, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s always a pleasure and look forward to the next time.

Courtney Brown: Thanks so much.

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today and a special thank you to our guest, Dr. Courtney Brown, and for her sharing with us her perspectives on what’s going on in higher ed and Lumina Foundation’s goal of 75% college and certificate attainment.

Courtney, always a pleasure of having you on the show. I look forward to the next time.

To our listeners, thanks again for listening. I’ll see you next