From Degrees to Value: Rethinking Education with Lumina Foundation

Jeff Kavanaugh:

I'm Jeff Kavanaugh, Global Head of the Infosys Knowledge Institute, and we're here at Infosys Foundation USA Crossroads 2025, where leaders across education, technology, and social impact have come together to shape the future of learning. I'm joined by Dr. Chauncy Lennon, Vice President for Learning and Work at Lumina Foundation. He leads efforts to expand access to education through community colleges and short-term credentials, building on previous roles at JPMorgan Chase and the Ford Foundation. With your experience across education technology, we're looking forward to this discussion. And first, since AI is at the top of everyone's mind, how can AI and data tools help close these gaps of access and equity in education and workforce development?

Chauncy Lennon:

So first of all, thanks for having me. Obviously, it's a big topic, right? Like, lots of things will change with the rise of AI. And so I think every time I talk about this, I want to start by saying we have really just begun to think about the different use cases. But one of the use cases that has really, I think, sticking out to me as having a lot of possibility is one of our biggest challenges right now is navigation. Helping students understand what their choices are. We're moving away from a world in which we're telling every student, you must have a BA. So we think about multiple pathways, whether that's a BA, certificate or certification, or other kinds of ways in which you work and learn across your life course. And to make that decision means that you need to know a lot about different kind of career options, how career options are tied to different kinds of learning, and we have a very weak infrastructure. So the ability of AI to provide simulation, to provide understanding of what's involved with different kinds of occupations has tremendous potential to solve this big navigation challenge. And we know that's even true for students who are going get BAs. Your major matters quite a bit. We have not built the kind of infrastructure that helps people make serious, thoughtful decisions about what direction they want to go. The potential of AI to do the simulation that could do that much better is really exciting. To know the pathways and even how the pathways themselves might evolve.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

That’s right. None of this is static, right? What EdTech innovations from Beam or Noodle, like we talked about, show the most promise for expanding access to these credentials?

Chauncy Lennon:

So I think we have to really understand that the structure of education in this country is a legacy model. It's a model in which students tend… It’s built to solve a different problem. It's 50 years in the rear-view mirror.

Or more. And I think we have to think a lot about demographics. So we have a cohort, we're going to have 30 million high school graduates, give or take, in the next decade. They're going to enter into a world defined by things like AI, and they're going to need to think about an education that combines both general skills and technical skills. So we've got to remake what that traditional BA looks like. At the same time, we have 40 million or more adults who have some college, no credential and 50 million adults who just have a high school diploma. All of them need to go get more education and training. And so we need to think about what are the different ways in which Ed technology, in partnership with community colleges and other kind of training providers can do a better job around giving people access to education that is short-term, flexible and tied to occupations.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Well, nice lead in because big fan of community colleges. How can community colleges use digital platforms to better serve both adult learners and also just underserved groups in general?

Chauncy Lennon:

That’s right. So, I mean, the task is large. I think the first thing that tech does is really give actually community colleges the data they need to run the organization in a far more efficient way, right? Especially when you think about the challenges a lot of the short-term training programs and how they need to engage differently. We need to do better outreach to different kinds of students. With adults, adults are often choosing between, it's not, do I enroll at this community college or that community college? It’s do I not enroll? So we need to use tech to actually make the case to adults about why enrolling can make a lot of sense for their own lives, for their career opportunities, for their families. And then when we get there, they need to have an experience that is far more streamlined. The information needs to be presented to them upfront about what path they're on. Too many adults go and they're forced to take too many different kinds of classes. There's way too many choices. We need to create a far more transparent, guided pathway through community colleges. Technology is going to help with all of that.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

We can talk about what happens in the classroom. And then you see the outcomes, like a link to those. Taking a bit of a respectful pause here for a moment, what is the Lumina Foundation's approach to ensuring there's responsible use of tech, responsible use of AI, especially around data and accountability?

Chauncy Lennon:

So we think a lot at Lumina about the institutions and systems of higher education. And we know that those systems are often underfunded, and they often are focusing with the scarce resources they have on really figuring out how do you educate the students you have right now, the students who are in the seats. And there's not enough investment in let's call it R&D, right? Any smart business, Infosys, invests a lot of money in R&D. They understand the world is changing, and you need to evolve your business practices to really stay competitive. That's not how we thought about educational institutions and when it comes to this question of how they're going to use AI and other technology, that's a place where we need to figure out how to get them the resources to invest whether it's in the pedagogy in the classroom or it's in the operations or it's in the kind of way in which data will help their students understand what their options are in the labor market. We need to sort of create the opportunity for those institutions to get smarter and better on all those fronts.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Speaking of getting information out there, the Knowledge Institute, which I'm part of, very much about thought leadership. How do you use thought leadership as you advocate for educational access, whether it's stories, data, research, to get the word out, whether it's funders or actually students?

Chauncy Lennon:

So if you know the Lumina Foundation, what you probably know about us is that back in 2009, we said, you know, we're looking at a country that's losing its competitiveness, right? We don't have enough people who have higher education. We're a country that's not doing enough to create opportunities for individual economic mobility. And we still have some very persistent gaps around racial equity, gender equity, other forms of inequality. The way to solve that will be more people attaining a college credential. So we set the national attainment goal of 60% of adults having a potential value by 2025. So one of the ways we really thought about our thought leadership was how can we create a goal? It wasn't an edict. It wasn't telling everybody what they had to do. It was saying, if we want to be a competitive nation, we all had to think about this North Star. As I said, it's 2025. We just announced a new goal. This new goal builds on the work around attainment to say the next thing that we need to think about in terms of the guiding direction of our higher education system is value. It's not enough just to access higher education, it's not enough just to complete, you've got to complete a credential that leads to value, whether that's a sustainable career or a prosperous community. And Lumina uses our thought leadership to really build out and help people appreciate the importance of value in terms of the next chapter for higher education in the U.S.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Good to see that from attainment to outcome value. How has your view on tech-driven social impact evolved through your work in philanthropy?

Chauncy Lennon:

So I think... Sometimes, and I appreciate the experience for a lot of educational leaders who are like, here's another thing we're being sold. Here's just another thing, another fad we're supposed to get on when we don't have the resources to do the thing that we've always felt was core, like what happens in the classroom, supporting students. I think what we have to begin to recognize is that tech actually, we've seen enough cases now where tech can help institutions do better. They need data just to run more efficiently and effectively and they've got to think about the way in which tech is going to give us better data about how students learn and how students progress through institutions. I think the other important thing here is I think for too long we've had a false dichotomy between the idea that either you should have a more general education, get a BA, or you should have a more technical education. Go get a certificate or a certification.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

T-SKILLS.

Chauncy Lennon:

Right, and what everybody needs is to think about this as a spectrum. You might have a BA, but you're probably going to want to dose some more technical skills as part of that BA, and that's going to put you on the right path in the labor market. Likewise, if you're just getting a welding certification and you don't also have a set of more general skills, and we've got lots of names for those, durable skills, soft skills, whatever you want to call them, we know those students are also going to be disadvantaged. So the way to think about this, I think, is that there's no, get away from the false dichotomy and figure out how we get everybody a dose of both.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Well said. How should funders looking to support these kinds of things balance support for traditional institutions, universities, the big institutes, with these emerging credential platforms? Is it one or the other?

Chauncy Lennon:

It's a great question. And partly that's because I think Lumina, we're a foundation that really thinks about scale. That's what the goal does. It makes us think about big numbers. How do we get to 60% and now 70%? I think the trick here is by, so that means focus on lot of the incumbent institutions. But it's also true that a lot of innovation comes from outside. And so I think Lumina, we're always thinking about the balance of ensuring that we're sort of building a platform that can really reach all sorts of students, but thinking about how we use innovation, whether that's coming from within the system or outside of it, to build the capacity for systems to redesign and to transform themselves to meet the needs of today.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

We could talk for a long time. I know you want to get back to the conference. Thank you so much for your insights.

Chauncy Lennon:

My pleasure. Really appreciate it.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

The work you're doing is so important. As we like to say at the Knowledge Institute, for all of you, keep learning and keep sharing.