Daily Lumina News 060121

Adonis Summerville is a teacher at the Jane Addams Resource Corporation, an organization in Chicago that helps people acquire the skills they need to land manufacturing jobs. Ten years ago, Summerville had just enrolled as a student at the school. Back then, he was a young, unemployed father recently released from prison.
As lawmakers debate President Biden's infrastructure plan, there's bipartisan agreement on at least one of its goals: reviving manufacturing. The administration wants to reverse a long-term decline in manufacturing jobs and it's promising billions of dollars for workforce training programs to make it happen.

The American Families Plan proposes more than $100 billion to make two years of community college free for all students. But many students who start at community college with the goal of getting a bachelor’s degree never do so.
San Antonio College is changing those statistics. As the oldest public two-year college in Texas, the institution has built a comprehensive transfer system that gets and keeps students on track with clear pathways to a bachelor’s degree and strong connections with four-year institutions.

Around 43 million Americans owe $1.5 trillion in federal student loan debt, an enormous number with broad economic implications. President Joe Biden has expressed support for canceling up to $10,000 per student in loan debt, with some advocates for student debt cancellation pressing him to go even further.
Five individuals from around the country reflect on what student debt cancellation would mean to them.

Even as vaccine rollouts allow many institutions to resume in-person instruction, the need for low-cost and reliable high-speed internet and web-enabled devices remains crucial to students completing assignments, studying for exams, communicating with professors and classmates, and participating fully in higher education, says a new report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
This is especially true for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds, who are more likely to face barriers to accessing reliable technology, the report notes.

Legacy admissions have long been a target for reform. Last week, Colorado became the first state to do away with that admissions boost when Gov. Jared Polis signed a ban on the practice into law. The governor also signed a bill removing a requirement that public colleges consider SAT or ACT scores for freshmen.
Both moves are aimed at making higher education access more equitable. According to the legislation, 67 percent of middle- to high-income students in Colorado enroll in bachelor's degree programs straight from high school, while 47 percent of low-income students do. There are also major differences when it comes to race, with white students far more likely to enroll in college.

When Elijah Megginson started to be recognized as a promising student, he was told, “You’re smart and you’re from the projects; colleges will love you.” But Megginson didn’t want to focus on the hardships he faced when applying to college.
In this essay, Megginson talks about resisting the pressure to sell his trauma to college admissions officers and focus instead on other elements of his life.