Daily Lumina News 080320

When it comes to college, many Latino students adjust their attendance patterns to afford their education and fit into a system that’s not built for them.
In this interview, Janette Martinez of Excelencia in Education discusses the importance of Hispanic voices in policy dialogues about affordability and student borrowing.

The bittersweet family tradition of driving the new, nervous college student to school and setting up a tiny dorm room together has now become an exercise in risk assessment, logistics, and trying to understand ever-changing rules.
Nearly half of the country’s states currently have statewide travel restrictions, with various degrees of self-quarantines orders—encouraged, strongly encouraged, mandatory—not to mention suggested or required testing.

With their summer jobs and internships canceled and anxiety about getting COVID-19—or just succumbing to boredom—college students have found at least one type of work that they largely can do at home this summer: mentoring even younger students.

The long tradition of students attending small, residential liberal arts colleges around the country was already shaky before the pandemic. Students are choosing less expensive options and more practical degrees.
At the same time, people who study higher education finance have been warning for years that a shakeout is coming for small colleges and universities. Now, because of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic recession, that prediction may be sooner rather than later.

A longtime higher-education buzzword is gathering new buzz: consolidation.
It’s not hard to see the appeal, in the current moment, of combining institutions. Faltering enrollment, shrinking numbers of high-school graduates in the forecast, and feeble state support have compelled public systems—many of them overbuilt for their states’ populations—to explore more, and more ambitious, consolidations. COVID-19 is likely to make those forces even stronger.

As colleges unveil their reopening plans for the fall, concerns about the safety of faculty teaching in classrooms populated with young adults have taken center stage. But largely left out of the conversation have been the people actually getting campuses up and running: the staff.