Daily Lumina News 092320

The hurdles to earning a college degree are many—confusion about the application process, lack of academic preparation, and cost, to name just a few.
But another obstacle can be considered just as significant: geography. These charts take a closer look at the intersection of place and the pursuit and costs of a college degree.

As Congress debates the stalled COVID-19 relief bill, community colleges are bracing for impending and serious state funding cuts. The only question is how badly the cuts—resulting from decreased tax revenues from the pandemic induced recession—will impact their budgets.
Many governors used CARES Act funding to close their higher education budget shortfalls in the spring, but without that funding, substantial cuts are coming. Worse, these cuts will aggravate existing resource inequities between community colleges across the country.

The disparities are striking. While 83 percent of white public-school students in New Orleans enrolled in college after high-school graduation, only 59 percent of Black public-school students did. Of those New Orleans students who do go to college, 91 percent of white students returned for the fall of their second year, compared with 68 percent of Black students.
Four Black New Orleans residents share their stories of navigating barriers to college and how they managed to return, sometimes decades later, to earn a degree.

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, filmmaker, and immigration rights activist, discusses the prospects of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in the United States, immigration policy in general, and what colleges and universities can do to help undocumented students who are living in limbo.