Daily Lumina News 050421

The past year underscored America’s urgent need to integrate work and learning. As the country emerges from the pandemic, employers need a highly trained workforce and educators need to connect learning to good jobs.
One institution—Empire State College in the State University of New York system (SUNY Empire)—is leading the way with innovative employer partnerships that help people learn, earn, and improve their lives.

No industry remained untouched when the pandemic struck in March 2020, the least of which education. In just a matter of days, educational systems immediately pivoted toward online learning to help reduce the spread of COVID-19.
While that upheaval certainly caused some strife, the pandemic also illuminated areas where systems could improve. Within higher education, many college leaders realized just how creative their faculty and staff could be—and how some of the changes that occurred during the pandemic may remain.

Details surrounding President Biden’s proposed investment of $62 billion to support student completion and retention in higher education are scarce, but experts say there’s potential for the program to be the most transformative of the administration’s postsecondary proposals.
The grant program would offer funding to colleges and universities that serve high numbers of low-income students, particularly community colleges, to adopt success solutions that help students stay enrolled and earn a degree.

In the second year of the COVID-19 health crisis—with millions of people now vaccinated—more college campuses than not are choosing to do in-person graduation events this month.
As a result, there will not be too many do-it-yourself graduations in the coming weeks. But across the country, parents and graduates will confront commencements in May that are as atypical, modified, and sometimes contentious as the past school year has been.