Daily Lumina News 080222

Lorgia García Peña, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a child, was the only Black Latina scholar on the tenure track in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, her department committee unanimously recommended her for tenure. But once her case reached the administration, she was denied.
Today, García Peña is trying to find hope, while continuing her fight to dismantle inequitable academic structures.

As more students experience mental health issues, colleges—in response—are devoting their limited and often-shrinking budgets to hiring more counselors.
But hiring counselors is not the only way to address the growing mental health crisis. Investments in programs that tackle larger cultural and social issues on residential college campuses are key, writes Jeff Frank of St. Lawrence University in this op-ed.

As the prospect of President Biden canceling student debt continues to dominate public discourse, new proposals are bringing into focus the administration’s broader plans for overhauling a federal lending system that is widely considered broken.
But higher education experts and lawmakers are torn on whether the changes will deliver meaningful reforms for borrowers.

The U.S. Department of Education originally thought the student loan program would make money—instead, it's losing it, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
From 1997 to 2021, the Education Department estimated that payments from federal direct student loans would generate $114 billion for the government. But the GAO found that, as of 2021, the program has actually cost the government an estimated $197 billion.