Daily Lumina News 111121

The pandemic has underscored the fact that all students need access to reliable broadband to succeed in their education—and that innovative solutions are urgently required.
In response, colleges and advocates across the nation are stepping up with approaches that range from getting broadband access into all public housing to partnering with a local public school district to share its private LTE network.

For Luis Pinto-Jimenez, food shopping used to be an arduous and expensive chore involving hours on a bus between classes to find a supermarket.
Holyoke Community College's Homestead Market aims to make the process of getting nutritious food easier. The school also hopes to do something no other community college in the state is doing: accept SNAP EBT benefits for students.

Parenting is hard. It's even harder when trying to balance the pursuit of higher education and the demands of a job.
America’s 4 million student parents, most of them women and people of color, bring a wealth of life skills, organizational ability, and a special commitment to reaching their education goals. What they need is an equal determination on the part of colleges and universities to help them succeed.

The good news: More students of Latino descent are applying, attending, and graduating from public colleges and universities in California, according to a new report by the Campaign for College Opportunity.
The bad news: Much more work needs to be done to ensure their success. This includes expanding financial support and streamlining transfer pathways, the report states.

Colleges large and small are finding themselves inundated with requests from companies hoping to recruit students. The demand is a major reversal from earlier in the pandemic when internships were cancelled in droves and job offers to new graduates fell.
In many ways, the ball now rests in the students’ court, leaving companies to figure out how to differentiate themselves to stay competitive and recruit the talent they need.

Each year, millions of students who receive federal financial aid are required to undergo an additional review of their financial information by the Department of Education called verification, a process that has proven to be burdensome for both students and institutions.
College access advisors and financial aid administrators say data sharing and changing how the Education Department selects students for verification could go a long way in providing relief.