Daily Lumina News 020420

If colleges, universities, and the managers of public government programs got serious about graduating more single mothers pursuing a degree, the ripple effect on individual incomes—plus state and federal coffers—would be enormous, a new collection of reports shows.
For instance, if every single mother in college received case management services for the time they’re in class, a cost of about $11 billion, the degree-attainment rate would increase by 47 percentage points. The societal gains from that investment would be $92.5 billion, the reports say.

The rebirth of Louisiana's career and technical education system could become one of the state's biggest education success stories.
The number of students graduating with career diplomas has skyrocketed in recent years. The improvements are the result of Jump Start, a program launched in 2014 that aims to graduate students with the credentials they need to enter high-paying, in-demand industry jobs.

It wasn’t a weekend music concert or sports event that brought Vilma and David Martinez to the Cal State Los Angeles campus on a recent Saturday morning. Instead, they came to hear counselors and faculty suggest ways to encourage their son’s success at a university where only about half of incoming freshmen finish within six years.
The 160 parents who showed up for that “Parent Academy” session are part of a widening trend by universities to improve graduation rates, especially among students who are the first in their family to attend college. Parents increasingly are seen as partners with campuses in supporting these young adults when they encounter emotional, bureaucratic, financial, or academic obstacles.

For years, businesspeople, pundits, and policymakers have speculated on the health of the higher-education sector, and some predictions of a die-off among the nation’s colleges have only gotten more dire over time.
Now a new book estimates the market viability of more than 2,800 undergraduate institutions. The authors examine four key variables—new student enrollments, net cash price, student retention, and major external funding—to gauge whether an institution is likely to consider closing or merging with another school.