Daily Lumina News 041824

Though the Free Application for Federal Student Aid fiasco of 2024 has affected everyone with a stake in the federal-aid process, low-income and underrepresented minority students are feeling its effects most deeply.
A long string of bureaucratic and technical glitches continues to strand the nation’s most vulnerable applicants in limbo, complicating—and threatening to unravel—the already-grueling search for an affordable college.

You're officially going to college. But will the school you pick still have its lights on by the time you get to graduation?
It’s a question more and more families are asking as universities and colleges face financial and enrollment challenges, close, or merge. This episode of College Uncovered explores what schools are doing to stay alive, what happens to students when they shut down, and how to check on the financial health of postsecondary institutions.

A new agreement with the University System of Maryland will establish a framework to bring higher education programs to every state-run prison, utilizing newly reinstated federal Pell grants to allow incarcerated people to pursue bachelor’s degrees and envision a future of possibilities.
The deal, the department says, makes it the first corrections division in the country to formalize an agreement with an entire state university system.

For young adults who are on the brink of homelessness, Los Angeles Room & Board offers a comprehensive suite of wraparound supports to help. Rather than trying to figure out where they will sleep every night, they focus on attending school or earning an income.
Many residents, like Josefina Sebastian, receive academic counseling through the program. Sebastian enrolled at Los Angeles City College when she arrived last April and has since transferred to California State University, Los Angeles, where she is majoring in social work.

One of Cleveland’s iconic buildings could get a major $86 million upgrade and offer new amenities and housing for Cleveland State University students.
Cleveland State’s 21-story Rhodes Tower, which opened in 1971, has been underutilized for years because of unaddressed maintenance problems and aging infrastructure. But university officials are trying again to give the tower new life.

Just two years ago, it seemed like a 3D virtual realm for education was imminent, with several college campuses starting to build replicas of their physical campuses in VR spaces. Meanwhile, think tanks were issuing reports on how to best harness virtual reality for education.
That buzz has all but vanished. So what happened to the early education experiments in the metaverse, and what do those watching the space think is next?