Daily Lumina News 060421

Too often, struggles to meet food, transportation, and other basic needs derail the college dreams of many promising students.
In this op-ed, Tashauna Stewart discusses her path to the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2019, followed by Northern Arizona University, the financial challenges she encountered, and why doubling the maximum amount available under the Pell Grant would signal to more students that college is within their reach.

When classes moved online in the spring of 2020, instructors quickly realized that the plans and policies listed in their syllabi would no longer work. For many professors, that meant reconsidering aspects of their teaching they hadn’t thought about in years—if ever. And that led to deeper questions: What, in the end, is this course meant to accomplish? Which pieces of it are really required to achieve that goal?
More than a year later, as they look back on this era of teaching in a pandemic and through social turmoil, many faculty members have remade their teaching in small and large ways, which could have profound implications even after campuses reopen.

Someday, future historians will read the detailed stories of 22 University of California, Santa Cruz community members who lived through the COVID-19 pandemic. They will learn about sudden changes to best-laid plans, each of them containing the words “and then COVID happened.”
The firsthand accounts of resilience and loss are preserved in "The Empty Year: An Oral History of the Pandemic(s) of 2020 at UC Santa Cruz." The interviews, gathered in late 2020 by UCSC students, document a global pandemic, the threat of the devastating CZU Lightning Complex fires, economic justice in America, and more.

While public awareness of housing insecurity among community college students has grown over the years, there’s now a “distinct uptick” in new pilot projects and plans to house them.
These renewed efforts to offer housing options come in the aftermath of a pandemic that closed campuses and left many students scrambling for affordable places to live. Colleges are also finding lawmakers, local housing authorities, and four-year institutions to be increasingly willing partners in these initiatives at a time when already underresourced institutions are beleaguered by plummeting enrollments and budget constraints that would prevent them from building housing on their own.

Like many historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Wilberforce University is fighting to spare graduates from crushing student loan debt. Last month, the university did just that when it announced to 2020 and 2021 graduates that their financial debts to the university would be forgiven.
HBCUs have long been chronically underfunded. This complicates their efforts to provide scholarships to students desperately needing financial support. About 25 percent of students who attend HBCUs borrow $40,000 or more, according to the United Negro College Fund.

President Joe Biden’s ambitious proposal to upgrade the country’s infrastructure is welcome news after a years-long failure to train the kinds of workers needed to do it. But many of the industries needed to complete this work are already struggling to find skilled labor.
A more diverse workforce could help fill jobs, but it will take broader steps to complete the slew of infrastructure projects proposed by the administration. Experts say Congress should pay attention to a few relatively easy fixes, including allowing students to use Pell Grants to pay for short-term college vocational programs and investing in child care to help older students get the training they need to change jobs.