Daily Lumina News 102523

Aisha Rashid, who is working on a degree in physical oceanography and marine biology at the University of Washington, expects the warming planet to create a major tipping point very soon. She is convinced that people will increasingly demand solutions as the impact of climate change hits closer to home.
Rashid also predicts that the answers will come from the private sector. The profit motive will accelerate the demand for a skilled environmental workforce, she says, and put to rest concerns that many environmental careers are economically unsustainable.

As college leaders confront what’s been called a crisis in student mental health, many of them are asking professors to play the part of first responders.
On a growing number of campuses, professors are stepping up to the role, introducing “mindfulness minutes” in their classes, doing away with midnight deadlines, and offering no-questions-asked mental-health days. At the same time, some professors say they are uncomfortable serving as wellness coaches or trying to recognize what counts as a crisis.

The Debt Collective, the nation’s first debtor’s union, is canceling close to $10 million in student debt for Morehouse College students.
The no-strings gift, which eliminates 2,777 accounts for the Fall 2022 term and prior, will enable thousands of Black men to receive their diplomas, access their transcripts, pursue further education, and move on with their lives, say organizers.

Brianna Kidd graduated from Elmhurst University in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology—and $42,000 in student debt. For three years, her monthly loan payments went toward interest, not the principal. But Kidd refuses to give up.
Kidd represents one of the demographics most burdened by student debt. A year after completing a bachelor’s degree, Black women on average hold $38,800 in federal loans. That amount, which is close to what Kidd owed, far exceeds the average debt held by any other group.

Thousands of students in Mexico commute daily to attend school in the United States. But there are also those who travel each day in the opposite direction.
Over the past few years, Centro de Ensenanza Tecnica y Superior in Tijuana has worked hard to appeal to students north of the border. Residents in the United States now make up 10 percent of the student body at the university, drawn by cheaper tuition and smaller class sizes.

A federal policy change may give thousands of students access to transcripts and academic credits that their colleges have withheld because they owed the institutions money.
The new rule, part of a broad package of regulations the U.S. Education Department unveiled yesterday, could amount to a national ban on the practice of transcript withholding, experts say.