Daily Lumina News 073123

Confidence in higher education has fallen sharply. How much of the decline can be attributed to the larger loss of confidence in institutions? What role is student debt playing? And what is holding back thousands of Americans from achieving their higher education aspirations?
Stephanie Marken, a partner of Gallup’s Education Division, joins this podcast to discuss those questions and more.

Federal guidance is coming soon. Until then, don’t let third parties dictate your admissions policies.
That’s the message Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Higher Education's Office for Civil Rights, is telling college officials in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision limiting the consideration of race in admissions.

One month after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in college admissions, congressional Democrats are relaunching an effort to ban legacy admissions at colleges. College access groups are applauding the move.
The proposed legislation would prohibit colleges from participating in federal financial aid programs if they offer legacy seats.

Every year, millions of people with criminal records face the unknown as they pursue education and workforce training on their way to jobs that require a license.
That's because nearly 14,000 laws and regulations can restrict individuals with arrest and conviction histories from getting licensed in a given field. Several organizations are calling on policymakers to remove these barriers to employment for formerly incarcerated individuals.

Kathleen James-Chakraborty attended Yale University, as did her father and two great-grandfathers. Today, James-Chakraborty believes that the same legacy admissions practice that boosted her application long ago should no longer exist.
Like James-Chakraborty, students and alumni of many colleges and universities—not just ultra-elite ones—are now wrestling with the practice of legacy admissions, a debate with far broader implications after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted race-based admissions programs and forced colleges to reconsider their criteria for accepting students.

Throughout Texas, there are 900,000 students in small- to medium-sized rural school districts. While rural students graduate at a higher rate than their urban peers, only 28 percent of rural high school graduates have college degrees compared to 41 percent of their urban counterparts.
Two organizations that focus on empowering rural school districts are working to improve those statistics.