Daily Lumina News 062623

Advocates say work requirements for public assistance programs not only leave college students hungry, but could discourage Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients who are not already in college from enrolling.
Changing SNAP rules to encourage education, rather than just employment, could help more people improve their circumstances, critics of work requirements say.

It’s true that high school graduating classes are shrinking in many communities. But the number of adult learners between 24 and 50 is growing exponentially.
If we shift our focus away from worrying about the enrollment cliff, we can reimagine how our campuses can serve all learners, especially adults, whether they’re 18 or 35. We can dedicate resources to community outreach, holistic student support, flexible class schedules, and hybrid course offerings, write Lumina Foundation's Katy Launius and Mary Laphen Pope in this essay.

The current political storms hovering over diversity, equity, and inclusion hark back to the inception of DEI work on college campuses. DEI was formed and reshaped by political crises.
What we know as DEI today emerged from the smoke, fire, and ash of hundreds of urban uprisings following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King in 1968. The killing of the country’s most visible civil-rights leader forced higher education to reckon with both the demands of minorities, in that case Black Americans, and its own legacy of racism.

Lawmakers in Florida, Texas, and Ohio have passed bills this year requiring their public colleges to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion offices. Leaders at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville aren't waiting on legislative mandates; the school dissolved its DEI division on its own.
But the DEI office’s staff and resources will be retained and reallocated to other offices, primarily in human resources and student success. Is the move a capitulation to right-wing demands or a savvy defense tactic?

Despite the fact that 20 percent of public school students in the United States live in rural areas, many college campuses either don’t track their populations of rural students or find the number to be low.
The Small Town and Rural Students (STARS) College Network aims to change that by improving access to information about college for rural students around the country, including in California.

The California State University system bills itself as the country’s most diverse four-year public university system. But it is experiencing an ongoing decline in the enrollment and retention of Black students, despite an initiative meant to increase graduation rates.
A new report offers a path to improvement. Among the 13 systemwide recommendations: developing a data-driven retention plan for Black students and other groups facing similar persistence gaps and creating an inclusive and culturally relevant curriculum to engage students.