Daily Lumina News 111822

Three months ago, the Biden administration rolled out a plan for canceling some student debt. But in the past week, after 26 million borrowers had submitted applications for relief, two court rulings brought it to a halt.
For financial aid offices, many of which are understaffed, the court actions have created waves of questions and concerns from current students and alumni. The constant stop-and-go of the program is making many borrowers feel like “a political Ping-Pong ball,” one official says.

California has the most Hispanic Serving Institutions among its colleges of any state—174, including 21 California State University campuses and five University of California campuses.
But how well are HSIs—which enroll almost 90 percent of the state’s Latino undergraduates—actually serving Latino students? It’s a mixed bag, students and advocates say.

The University of California, Berkeley School of Law is withdrawing from U.S. News & World Report's annual law-school ranking. The announcement comes one day after Yale Law School and Harvard Law School pulled out of the high-profile publication.
Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says the magazine’s formula penalizes institutions that help students pursue careers in public-service law and motivates schools to enroll more high-income students who don’t need to borrow to earn their degrees.

The economy became a key theme in the 2022 midterm elections, with voters repeatedly identifying inflation as their top issue. With inflation outpacing wages, workers—particularly low-income earners, those from communities of color, and women—need all the support the nation can muster.
Apprenticeships can help more Americans get on a path to economic security, write Cameron Johnson and Emily Andrews of CLASP in this essay. But to do so, the programs must be designed for equity.

After languishing for decades, youth participation in the 2022 midterm elections is giving student voting activists cause to rejoice. About 27 percent of people ages 18-29 cast a ballot, according to initial estimates. It’s the second-highest youth participation rate in a midterm over the past 30 years.
Credit for the high youth rates goes to several new tactics, say experts. Among them: voter registration in new student orientation, using campus student lists for outreach, and accessing federal work study funds for voter education efforts.

Five professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dropped a provocative white paper in September proposing a new kind of college that would address some of the growing public skepticism of higher education.
This week, they took the next step toward bringing their vision from an idea to reality.