Daily Lumina News 091621

Education benefits programs are becoming must-haves for major employers.
A new report shows that when companies invest in their employees, workers and employers reap the benefits. Employees gain skills and opportunities for career advancement, and employers build more qualified workforces while boosting their bottom lines.

Newly released data by the National Center for Education Statistics provides a highly anticipated look at how COVID-19 has upended colleges’ enrollment, staffing, and finances during the past academic year.
The data underscore what has trickled out about institutions over the last 18 months: indicators of plummeting enrollment with warning signs for equity, fears of colleges’ faltering finances, and signs of their shrinking academic workforces.

After Niki Woodard faithfully made student loan payments for 10 years, she applied for relief on her remaining loan balance. She was rejected because she had the wrong kind of federal loan, a problem that has derailed hundreds of thousands of others. None of her past payments counted.
Woodard, a single mother in Sacramento, now worries that her 13-year-old daughter’s college choices will be constrained by her mother’s debts.

Higher education is coming off an academic year like no other in recent memory. Despite the challenges caused by the pandemic, the past year has also created a number of positive learning lessons for colleges and universities.
David Thomas, president of Morehouse College, talks about those lessons—plus the challenges of building on the legacy of a storied institution and stretching traditions in transformative ways.

Colorado community college enrollment dipped slightly over last year, an encouraging sign after expectations the pandemic would again deter a larger group of students from attending this fall.
Despite enrollment declining slightly, the challenges for community colleges—and their students—remain statewide. Enrollment still remains well below pre-pandemic levels. And that’s troubling for state leaders because community college enrollment can be an important indicator of the overall economic health of the communities the schools serve.

Students pursuing a college degree generally have a sense of where their institution ranks in comparison to others, but not necessarily how their particular course of study measures up.
Now they can find out. Using data from the latest College Scorecard, two new studies examine which degree programs at which institutions offer graduates the best chance of recouping their costs and repaying their loans.