Daily Lumina News 052223

On any random day, Liz Franczyk can be found putting out fires for students. Franczyk isn’t a financial aid officer, nor does she disburse institutional dollars. She’s an adjunct Spanish instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College and executive director of the FAST Fund, which stands for Faculty and Students Together.
For many students, the small grant program is a literal lifeline—one that spells the difference between dropping out and staying enrolled, between having an apartment and having nowhere to sleep, between hope and game over.

The University of California will spend the next six months debating a proposal to hire undocumented students for jobs across the 10-campus system.
If approved, undocumented students will have the same access as other students to research and other campus jobs. Critics believe it could encourage unauthorized immigration. Jeffry Umaña Muñoz, an undocumented student at the University of California, Los Angeles, weighs in.

College programs that leave graduates underpaid or buried in loans will be cut off from federal money under a proposal issued last week by the Biden administration. However, the rules apply only to for-profit colleges and a tiny fraction of programs at traditional universities.
Officials at the U.S. Department of Education are calling the measure a significant step toward accountability for the nation's colleges. Others say the scope is still too narrow to help most students.

America is on the cusp of a semiconductor manufacturing boom, strengthened by billions of dollars that the federal government is funneling into the sector.
President Joe Biden says the funding will create thousands of well-paying jobs, but one question looms large: Will there be enough workers to fill them? In response, community colleges, universities, and school districts are ramping up efforts to create or expand programs that will attract more students to the industry.

People are living longer, and at the same time, the birth rate is falling. The convergence of these trends is raising awareness among employers that their continued growth—and that of the economy more broadly—depends on looking at the value and contribution of older workers differently.
A new guide from the Encore Network summarizes the policies and practices that age-friendly employers are putting into place and the benefits gained as a result.

Students from the class of COVID—those who began high school before the pandemic and spent their first year and subsequent years adjusting to a new reality—are now graduating across the nation.
Three graduating high school seniors share how the pandemic shaped their adolescence—and the lessons they will apply in the next chapter of their lives.