“Right now they are being disproportionately influential,” says Dr. Michael Lomax, president and chief executive of the UNCF, crediting Lumina for having a much larger impact on the debate about how to improve higher education than its financial size would suggest it could. The Gates Foundation, for example, can afford to put $100 million into one project, he notes, nearly double the total annual payout of Lumina.

“The jury is still out,” on Lumina’s long-term impact, says Lomax. Still, its drumbeat focus on getting more people into the higher education system, and including HBCUs in the solution, is a welcomed one. “People are seeking them (Lumina) out,” he says.

Lumina has put its stamp on myriad activities around the country aimed at expanding access and success, from accelerated degree programs to initiatives to consolidate education operational costs. It has challenged the higher education community to rethink how to train, retain and better educate students. 

That includes working with educators on ways to better tailor learning so students can get through the process faster and still as equipped for the future. It’s touting benchmarking, performance and other buzz words of the day. All along the way, it has been talking up the importance of community colleges in helping the ranks of the nation’s educated.

Lumina was “the first to recognize community colleges as critical,” says Dr. George Boggs, president of the Washington, D.C.-based American Association of Community Colleges. “I think (Lumina) is doing well and having a strong impact because it’s very focused. They’ve got to be focused to make a difference.”

Lumina has emerged as a player so quickly and forcefully that some educators say privately they are not 100 percent sure of its motives. Lumina is not quiet about its “responsibility” as the nation’s “largest private foundation focused exclusively on getting more Americans into and through higher education.” In its annual report, it notes its charge to “create a national sense of urgency” around higher education and public policy to “achieve the big goal. Lumina will be a catalyst in America’s pursuit of the goal and the critical outcomes.”