Daily Lumina News 111220

This year, college freshmen are navigating a semester that’s nothing like what they expected when they started applying in the fall of 2019.
On campus, many are struggling to make friends and not finding much to do, with sizes of gatherings strictly limited and extracurriculars mostly virtual. Others are taking classes remotely, even further away from the traditional undergraduate experience. Many say their mental health has taken a hit. But they're fighting to make it through.

Activists, advocates, and scholars have been arguing for years that cancelling student-loan debt would provide an economic stimulus, correct decades of policy failure—and that the president has the authority to do it.
Now it’s looking more likely than ever that President-elect Joe Biden could potentially make that happen on Day 1 of his presidency.

Kamala D. Harris, a Black woman, is the vice president-elect of the United States. A range of other Black women helped to make this happen: Stacey Abrams, who is responsible in large part for the unprecedented voter turnout in Georgia, and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta.
They all have one thing in common: They received their education at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

An election noisily settled. Word of a COVID-19 vaccine. Hopeful jobs numbers. There’s room for optimism about 2021, but we’ll need everyone pulling together to make it a year of real economic recovery.
Our challenge now is to provide broad opportunities for learning to ensure that everyone can develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to do the work only humans can do—human work, writes Lumina Foundation's Jamie Merisotis in this essay.