Daily Lumina News 101421

As a former vice chancellor for workforce and digital futures in the California Community Colleges system, Van Ton-Quinlivan is a veteran in the workforce development field and a big proponent of employers working side-by-side with educators and employees to create a strong talent pool.
On this podcast, the Futuro Health CEO discusses the role of collaborative partnerships in solving today's worker shortage and putting workers on the path to good careers.

Enrollment of Latino students plummeted during the pandemic. This year, their first-time enrollment dropped by 20 percent.
But Deborah Santiago, co-founder and chief executive of Excelencia in Education, says the number of programs designed to address the needs of Latino students continues to grow. In this interview, she highlights several promising efforts to keep them on the path to success.

Colleges in states like California, Maryland, and Virginia now require the COVID-19 vaccine, sometimes threatening to take internet access or student housing from the unvaccinated—and occasionally booting them from the rolls altogether.
Other states are discouraging vaccine mandates or universal mask-wearing, both on and off campus. Pleas from campuses for more protections continue to escalate as the semester grinds on, forcing educators and students to amp up their calls for action.

Jasmine Neosh had arrived at an inflection point. In the fall of 2016, the Menominee tribal member was waiting tables and tending bar at an upscale Chicago eatery as the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline grew into a full-blown crisis in the northern Plains.
As Neosh sat eating lunch between shifts and fuming about what she saw as a fundamental betrayal of the Standing Rock Sioux and their Native allies, she realized there was only one solution: Finish her education and get to work.

When colleges first shut down more than 18 months ago in response to the coronavirus, it didn’t take long for the prognostications about higher education’s future to begin.
Sharp declines in enrollment, and in revenues from room and board, were imminent. Some students would sit out a year or transfer to institutions with cheaper tuition. And perhaps the most dire: The pandemic would be the death knell for institutions that, for years, had been barely hanging on. Some predictions came to fruition; others were off base.

The current grading system can be a way for students to prove themselves, win college scholarships, or gain admission to highly selective colleges. It also can turn into a game that encourages comparison to fictional “averages.”
This episode of Bootstraps explores the history behind today’s grading systems—plus reimagines a world where letter grades don’t have so much power.