Daily Lumina News 102422

When students struggle to find nutritious food or stable housing, learning becomes more challenging, and they are less likely to complete their education.
More colleges are redesigning their roles to more actively help students meet their basic needs. For instance, Ozarks Technical Community College in Montana provides free breakfast to students five days a week, and the North East Texas Community College Care Center houses a food pantry and a closet with personal hygiene supplies. It also offers opportunities for peer mentorship and group mental health therapy sessions.

In June, Northern Arizona University unveiled a campuswide initiative designed to expand access to higher education and prioritize equity at the Hispanic-serving institution.
In this interview, NAU's José Luis Cruz Rivera shares details of the Elevating Excellence program, how it was launched in just eight months, and what other colleges can do to move more quickly to help disadvantaged students.

In early 2020, at the start of the pandemic, colleges closed campus housing and students were sent home or sometimes into homelessness. The changes also left many students without the employment they relied on to make ends meet.
In response, the federal government provided $30 billion in emergency aid funds to support students. A new report argues that lessons learned from providing emergency aid at scale for the first time can help improve how similar aid is designed and delivered in the future.

During the pandemic, many colleges and universities embraced a form of blended learning called HyFlex in which students in a classroom learn synchronously alongside a cohort of peers studying remotely.
HyFlex moved from a fringe phenomenon to the mainstream because of COVID, but the experience was imperfect at best for professors and students alike. Is it likely to be part of colleges’ instructional strategy going forward?

A commission charged by the Texas Legislature to suggest new ways of financing the state’s community colleges has unanimously approved a recommendation that ties state funding to how successful schools are at getting students to graduate or transfer to four-year universities.
State higher education leaders are pushing for the changes as community colleges face greater workforce demands and financial pressures. The commission’s report now goes to lawmakers.

Despite stalling at the federal level, tuition-free college plans continue to spread with bipartisan support at the state level. These plans range in scope, support, and programmatic design.
A closer look at Michigan’s approach to providing free-tuition to some of its residents offers important lessons for the broader movement to make college affordable: Removing tuition can expand access to higher education, but not all free-tuition plans are created equal.