Daily Lumina News 102622

To find out why elite colleges love legacies, two business school professors were granted access to 16 years of admissions data at one elite Northeastern college. The upshot: It’s in this school’s clear self-interest to take them.
Alumni children who received offers enrolled at much higher rates. And these loyal families with multi-generational ties to the college were far more likely to donate funds, money that the school needs, in part, to offer scholarships to others.

Though she applied to college more than 40 years ago, Frida Marte can clearly remember the details of the experience. But now, when Marte logs in to her portal on the Department of Education’s financial aid website, there’s no proof that she used the grant she remembers so clearly.
Marte is not alone. Other student loan borrowers who believe they used a Pell grant decades ago can’t find evidence of the grant on their student aid portal. They worry it means they won’t get the full debt cancellation they believe they’re entitled to receive.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has turned a critical eye toward higher education’s monetary ecosystem recently. This month, it scrutinized the deals colleges strike with banks. But it’s been investigating other aspects of the sector as well.
That follows a September publication about the companies that administer federal student loans. The document paints a picture of an industry where deceptive and abusive practices are common, and where borrowers may not get the debt relief to which they’re entitled.

Many colleges rely on diversity training as a mainstay of their commitments to diversity. But do such programs actually help to improve diversity?
In this interview, two professors who conducted a comprehensive study of many kinds of diversity efforts at corporations share their recommendations for how colleges can improve diversity among their faculties.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis upended the national debate over the record number of arrests on the southern border by flying newly arrived migrants last month to Massachusetts, ostensibly to prevent them from burdening his state with the cost of their education and health care.
But after Hurricane Ian inflicted billions of dollars in damage, undocumented workers came to the Sunshine State to rebuild, joining tens of thousands of others who were already here—and who construction managers say are sorely needed.

California banned affirmative action in public higher education in 1996 through Proposition 209, but a case to be heard Monday in the U.S. Supreme Court could affect in-state private colleges and students seeking to attend college in other states.
Private colleges in California serve as many students as the University of California does—more than 356,000 undergraduate and graduate students in 2020, according to the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities.