Daily Lumina News 092822

The community college transfer process is often a bumpy ride. While many students who enroll in a community college want to get a bachelor’s degree, only about 30 percent successfully transfer to a four-year institution. Even fewer actually earn their degree.
A unique partnership between Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University aims to change that trajectory by reimagining the transfer pipeline.

In today's labor market, workers with experience, skills, and diverse perspectives are often overlooked because they lack a college diploma.
Getting employers to remove the bachelor's degree requirement for jobs that don't really need them is the mission of the Tear the Paper Ceiling ad campaign by Opportunity@Work. CEO Byron Auguste explains more in this interview.

As abortion restrictions become law in states across the country, faculty members and staff in some of those states face increasing limits on what they can say about reproductive health.
In some cases, the vagueness of the untested laws paired with the threat of felony prosecution have made scholars and even some students afraid to talk about what was only recently a constitutional right.

Research shows that low-income students face severe pressure to financially and materially support struggling family members. They also are expected to work throughout college to secure basic needs like affordable housing and food.
But as rent and food prices continue to surge across the nation, more colleges are looking for ways to facilitate access to livable wages tor students receiving federal work-study. For some institutions, increasing the starting minimum wage is a central part of the solution.

When students can’t cover their college costs—even with the help of financial aid—their parents sometimes turn to the federal government’s Parent PLUS program to borrow the balance.
Many education watchers, however, say Parent PLUS loans perpetuate racial inequity, with low-income Black and Latino families most likely to suffer financially after taking on Parent PLUS debt.

Since enrolling at Framingham State University three years ago, Tyler Risteen’s tuition has jumped nearly 50 percent. It’s an unexpected math lesson for a 21-year-old who chose a public university because it was so affordable.
While President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation proposal will help millions of borrowers, many policy analysts and academics say it does not go far enough to solve the real underlying challenge: college affordability. Economist Philip Levine, who teaches at Wellesley College, weighs in.