Daily Lumina News 042821

For years, community colleges have served students like Jamie Higginbotham who want to further their careers and better their lives. But too often, access is not enough. Josh Wyner of Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program explains.
"If you’re going to give life to the idea of post-graduation success, colleges themselves need to own whether they are getting students credentials that deliver both economic and social mobility for the individual and the talent that’s needed in the community," Wyner says.

Over the last several weeks, it has become clearer what the post-COVID-19 higher education landscape will look like. The trends that will shape the sector's future are not new—but the pandemic certainly accelerated them.
From a new emphasis on skills over degrees to the growing use of technology, the president of Denison University in Ohio offers his thoughts on what students, families, college faculty, and others can expect from higher education moving forward.

As Democrats and Republicans debate President Joe Biden's American Jobs Plan and the definition of infrastructure, we should not forget that we can’t fix bridges and roads without massive investment in higher education and retraining, writes Andre Perry in this op-ed.
Sustainable careers go hand in hand with a sustainable infrastructure system. Roads and bridges are still important, but the real undergirding of 21st-century infrastructure—upgraded power grids, sustainable transportation, renewable energy—is knowledge and science.

Braylon Dedmon was just days old when his mother, Talasheia, received an offer of $1,000 to open a college savings account in his name. At first, she thought it was a scam. It wasn't.
The money, part of an experiment in Oklahoma, is one of a growing number of efforts by cities and states to help a new generation climb the educational ladder and build assets. This study and others aren’t finished, but at a time when the gap between the richest sliver of Americans and everyone else is growing, the results have been encouraging.

Liz Anthony is one of millions of American moms whose ties to the workforce have been weakened by the pandemic. When her older daughters’ schools closed last spring because of COVID-19, Anthony, a self-employed public-relations consultant, closed her business indefinitely.
In March 2021, almost 1.5 million fewer moms of school-aged children were actively working than in February 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. During the depths of last year’s economic crisis, women’s participation in the workforce fell to levels not seen since the mid-1980s.

Israel Sanchez, who is working toward a bachelor’s degree in health care administration at Western Governors University, has been on a circuitous journey in higher education for nearly two decades.
Sanchez is among about 370,000 Utahns who have some college and no degree. Now, a recently approved legislative initiative aims to help adults finish what they started and prepare more highly educated workers for the state’s workforce.