- How do we make sure our most vulnerable populations have what they need to not just survive, but thrive?
- How do we use our limited resources more wisely, and for greater impact?
- How do we guarantee our community’s competitiveness and quality of life?
READ MORE: Lumina Foundation And Kresge Foundation Designate Detroit As Talent Hub
The Talent Hubs designation, conferred by Lumina with support from the Kresge Foundation, aims to significantly accelerate community and regional attainment efforts. These designated communities will improve the ecosystem in which students follow the pathway to, through, and out of their postsecondary experience with a high-quality credential. Talent Hubs will undertake aligned, system-change work with both community and postsecondary institutional partners to significantly improve student outcomes and to increase attainment beyond high school. Each Hub will focus intently on one of three populations: traditional-age students; adults with some postsecondary experience but no credential; or adults with no postsecondary experience. Further, Talent Hubs are committed to closing attainment gaps between student populations. Community partners will coordinate action to ensure that students are well-supported, can connect easily to the postsecondary system, have help to overcome barriers while enrolled, and are connected to the workforce once they complete their programs. Postsecondary partners will implement aligned, evidence-based practices and policies at scale to ensure that many more students can complete a credential. Earning a Talent Hub designation is an acknowledgment that a community has both the capacity and ability to make significant gains in postsecondary attainment. Each Hub serves as an exemplar across five key domains:- The Equity pillar represents the community’s ability to explicitly close chronic attainment gaps between populations, particularly between racial and ethnic groups, using strategies that have been developed by viewing attainment issues through an equity lens.
- Access work alone is insufficient in meeting the overarching national goal of 60 percent attainment by the year 2025; Attainment addresses the community’s focus on postsecondary success and credential completion.
- Alignment is the degree to which communities leverage complementary bodies of work, community and institutional partners, and the network of local assets available to implement ambitious workplans for credential completion.
- Scale and Systems-change addresses the systems-level action taken by communities and postsecondary institutions to create lasting and large-scale change at both the community and institutional levels.
- Finally, Partnership Health is the extent to which communities work collaboratively to set and achieve common goals, use agreed-upon accountability tools and measures, and use data to make decisions about program direction and design.