Daily Lumina News 092420

Before the public health crisis leveled the economy, employer-paid tuition programs were evolving from recruitment tools for college-educated candidates eyeing an MBA to a path for working-class employees to gain a foothold in higher education.
The recession could threaten that momentum if companies continue to shed jobs or curtail benefits. But Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College in Dallas, is making a calculated bet on the longevity of a movement that serves an often-ignored population of potential students: working adults.

The College of Health Care Professions is the largest producer of allied health graduates in Texas. Most of its students are Latino, Black, and from lower-income backgrounds.
Eric Bing, CHCP's CEO, discusses how the college and its students are holding up during the pandemic, how the school designed its credentials to be stackable, and what higher education can do to better serve today's students.

In normal times, a signature feature of college life is parties—often immortalized in so many Hollywood films where students let loose, meet others, and find out who they are. But this fall, as colleges try to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic, those very parties may be the biggest threat to keeping education going.
So, what’s left of campus life for students to enjoy at a time of social isolation? And how are professors coping?

For the past year, Jimena and Leslie Aguilar have worked in the agricultural fields eight hours a day, five days a week. They are among an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 child laborers who harvest the country's produce.
Experts say this work has affected a generation of children whose lives revolve around the fields—and who struggle to get educations. The Aguilar sisters work 40 hours a week, but they're also high school students, squeezing their homework into late-night study sessions and grabbing naps when they can. On many nights, they go without sleep at all.

Unlike other early college programs that have popped up across Louisiana in recent years, a new program known as the Early College Academy is zeroing in on specific, high-demand, higher-paying job fields. Its goal is to allow all those who complete the program to walk out of high school and walk right into a job.

Keith Whitfield took over as president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on August 24. He’s the university’s 11th permanent president, and the first Black president in the institution's 63-year history.
And he’s coming to UNLV at one of the toughest times in school history.