Daily Lumina News 031021

Emmanuel College, a Catholic, liberal arts-focused college in Boston, just celebrated its 100th anniversary. The school also exemplifies the kind of institution increasingly threatened by financial, demographic, competitive, and other pressures.
But Emmanuel has experience in making the structural changes necessary to survive—and thrive. The college stared down mortality before under the leadership of a long-serving president and treasurer, both of them nuns, who have come up with the sorts of survival strategies that many schools are scrambling to figure out.

One course shy of graduation and unable to pay some tuition debt, Chris Barrett left college about five years ago. Barrett is fortunate, however. With the help of a new scholarship program from Chestnut Hill College, he will be able to finish his bachelor's in criminal justice.
About 36 million Americans have some college but no degree. In response, more colleges like Chestnut Hill are offering adults a path to return. Other schools are looking at giving students college credit for industry-relevant experience and helping them with debt.

Southern New Hampshire University has added Kenzie Academy, a coding boot camp, to its growing arsenal of providers offering short-term credentials and alternatives to the traditional college degree. The acquisition is a natural fit for Southern New Hampshire, according to President and CEO Paul LeBlanc.
"We share a mission to help bring higher education to learners who have often been left behind by traditional higher education," LeBlanc says. "As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to displace workers, these shorter bursts of learning at affordable price points will be critical for learners to advance their careers and improve their lives in the new economy."

For all students, the coronavirus pandemic has been enormously disruptive. For the more than one million international students enrolled in American colleges, it has been a vortex, flinging them to every part of the globe.
Some—bound by academic obligations or blocked from returning home by travel restrictions—have remained in the United States. But they, too, are dislocated, cut off from the support of family and longtime friends.

The city of Hobbs, population just under 40,000, sits on the New Mexico side, as tight to the border as a wide receiver’s toes on a sideline catch. From the city’s eastern edge to the Texas line is barely more than two miles. From Hobbs to the Texas towns of Seminole and Denver City is a half-hour drive—next door, by the standards of the vast Southwestern plains.
But in the pandemic year of 2020, the two sides of the state line might as well have been in different hemispheres.

The “Biden Plan for Education Beyond High School,” unveiled during the campaign and now in the spotlight, promises a bold transformation of higher education.
But its ambitions fall short in an area with enormous potential impact: federal work-study. This program is hampered by funding and allocation issues and suffers from a major perception problem—namely, that the jobs it provides are viewed by nearly everyone as functional and transactional, rather than educational. This is an enormous missed opportunity, writes Isabel Roche of Bennington College in this opinion piece.