Daily Lumina News 081023

Despite a national spotlight on college costs, return on investment, access and completion, loan forgiveness, and many other high-profile higher education issues, a new report shows that Americans still think highly of community colleges—and more than half think they are underfunded.
New America’s annual “Varying Degrees” survey finds that 85 percent of polled Americans believe community colleges are worth the cost, compared to 66 percent of those who feel the same about public four-year colleges.

Cameron Driggers, who is gay, lives in Florida and plans to study business administration in the fall at the University of Florida. The decision to attend college in Florida, which has passed a slew of anti-LGBTQ+ laws under governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, wasn't an easy one.
But the anecdotes and statistics about LGBTQ+ college students leaving Florida obscure an important caveat: Not everyone has the means to move out of state.

Building on the success of a $140 million investment, Michigan is making community college free to hundreds of thousands more students by expanding its Michigan Reconnect program.
The state is trying to address a shortage of qualified workers by providing classes to people who otherwise cannot afford them. Michigan Reconnect offers tuition-free community college to adults with no postsecondary education.

If we make higher education fairer for those who have been shut out of the system, we’ll all be better off, not just them, writes Lumina Foundation's Jamie Merisotis in this perspective piece.
That means we must keep pressing for justice. But we also have to keep talking about it—about what fairness really means, and how everyone benefits when we work toward it, he says.

In a windowless office next to a hair salon, Bernard Lilly Sr. is surrounded by the many college pennants he has collected over the years while taking students in his mentoring program on college visits.
For nearly a decade, Lilly has shepherded kids from Chicago’s West Side to and through college. It’s an opportunity Lilly didn’t have.

In 2018, California Gov. Gavin Newsom set a goal of reaching 500,000 active apprentices by 2029. Given its potential to build a more equitable economy and provide opportunities for upward mobility, apprenticeship has become a key tool in California’s workforce development toolbox.
Although California’s investments in and policy support for apprenticeship are the most generous and extensive in the country, it has yet to invest substantially in expanding the model to youth—until now.