Daily Lumina News 012422

Several community colleges are now offering new short-term certificate programs designed to help students become desirable job candidates in less than a year’s time.
But students can’t nab these certificates with trade skills alone. To complete the “micro pathway,” they must also master a series of 21st century skills like empathy, creative problem solving, resilience, and critical thinking.

For many people, the quality or success of a college-in-prison program is often measured by recidivism rates.
But for Rahsaan “New York” Thomas, who attended a college surrounded by fences “adorned” with barbed wire, it's so much more.

The reasons for the drop in college-going rates have been widely discussed—declining birth rates, the widespread immediate availability of jobs—but the potential long-term effects of it have gotten less attention.
Those effects for people and society include slower economic growth, continued labor shortages, lower life expectancy, higher levels of divorce, and more demand for social services, but less tax revenue to pay for it.

Despite the rapid spread of the omicron variant, most college campuses are beginning their spring semesters in-person. Just 14 percent of colleges are starting online, according to new data from the College Crisis Initiative.
Colleges are deploying emergency measures as they scramble to deal with the surge in cases. Some schools are using hotels to house students who test positive. Others are offering gift cards if students move home to isolate.

The nation’s top research institutions are inching toward progress in their efforts to diversify their leadership, more than doubling the number of Black college presidents over the past 18 months, according to a new report from the Eos Foundation.
The problem? Only one of those presidents was a woman.

The omicron variant of COVID-19 is forcing students to adjust their pre-existing notions about pandemic life. Out with the cloth masks and in with the N95s. Two marks on your vaccine card are now insufficient, as booster shots become widely available.
But what exactly is safe to do on campus? And how can students best protect themselves? Public health experts weigh in.