Daily Lumina News 100322

Colleges are under growing pressure to prove their “value” to students, parents, legislators and others. The scrutiny can be uncomfortable, but more institutions are responding with serious efforts to measure and explain their worth.
On this episode of The Key, policy and education experts weigh in on the data and metrics currently being used to gauge the value that colleges and universities provide to students and other constituents.

Noah Widmann will never forget his first day of college: the new people, the expensive textbooks, and receiving news he was going to be a father. Before even setting foot in his classes, he immediately withdrew from all of them.
In this powerful essay, Widmann shares what it's like to navigate today’s higher education system as a student parent—and the supports parenting students need to succeed.

The antipathy many conservatives feel toward President Joe Biden's student debt relief plan, which the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated will cost roughly $400 billion, is as vivid as many borrowers' enthusiasm for it.
Legal opposition to Biden's debt relief has become a team effort, with several lawsuits already filed. How likely are they to succeed? That depends on whom you ask.

A growing movement is underway to stop assigning conventional A through F letter grades to first-year college students and, sometimes, upperclassmen. The idea is to ease the transition to higher education—especially for freshmen who are the first in their families to go to college.
But advocates say the most important reason to adopt "un-grading" is that students have become so preoccupied with grades, they aren’t actually learning. Critics, meanwhile, deride the move as coddling.

Six new institutions have earned Excelencia in Education's prestigious "Seal of Excelencia," and nine are being recertified.
The recognition is given because of the schools' focus on and efforts to boost Latino college completion. The 15 colleges join 15 other previously certified institutions, making up 30 certified institutions around the country that have enrolled 13 percent and graduated 14 percent of all Latinos in the United States.

The Marcy Lab School in Brooklyn bills itself as an alternative to a traditional four-year college—and one that provides the skills to land software engineering jobs with six-figure salaries. Students pay nothing to attend the school, which taps philanthropic support to cover the cost of instruction.
Co-founder Reuben Ogbonna explains more in this interview with his thoughts on experimentation, growth, and student choice.