Daily Lumina News 072523

When you think of a college student, you might imagine a young adult leaving home, moving into a dorm, navigating a campus and maybe attending a fraternity party. That’s an outdated image. Research shows that older adults with jobs and children are now a giant group on campus.
But thanks to dual enrollment courses, a more surprising species is spreading through the college registrar’s rolls: teenagers living at home, taking yellow buses to high school and maybe scrambling home before curfew.

Rice College president Reginald DesRoches launched his career as a civil engineer–turned–higher ed administrator back in the early 1980s, when he joined a summer bridge program for students from underrepresented backgrounds before his freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley.
Precollege programs can help boost access for students from underrepresented communities. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning affirmative action could force colleges to rethink them.

Race-conscious admissions may now be over. But a blockbuster new study finds that, effectively, affirmative action for rich students is alive and well.
They may or may not always do it on purpose, but a group of the most prestigious private colleges in America are handing a massive admissions advantage to wealthy students over less affluent ones—even when they have the same SAT scores and academic qualifications.

Colleges may come to rely more heavily on indicators such as applicants' first-generation status to boost their diversity following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last month that bans considering race as a factor in admissions.
But therein lies the challenge: Schools have very different definitions of what constitutes a first-generation student.

Too often, mechanical, agricultural arts, and other programs are seen as last stops, with potential learners unable to find or take advantage of these promising paths to learning and earning.
One reason is this: Training providers aren’t included in easily available data on colleges and universities. It’s time to fix that—and align education and training data, says Lumina Foundation's Chris Mullin in this essay.

Two prominent departures at top universities this month have a common link: inquisitive student journalists. The president of Stanford University and the head football coach at Northwestern University both left their positions after being scrutinized in campus newspapers.
The back-to-back revelations highlight the important role of college newspapers in holding to account the powerful institutions that house them.