Daily Lumina News 111920

Community colleges are institutions of opportunity and social equity in today's society. They also play a vital role in educating the nation’s workforce. Yet, community colleges receive just a little more than half of the revenue that their four-year counterparts get. For every student, community colleges receive $8,800 less.

This funding disparity harms the students who are more likely to attend them—low-income students, Black and Hispanic students, working parents, and others.

Uneasy. Concerned. Unsure. Anxious. These are the words that a group of students used to describe their first-year college experience.
They're not alone. The pandemic is hitting college students hard, creating fear and anxiety about their future. In this opinion piece, Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientist and president of Barnard College at Columbia University, says colleges must step up and give students the tools they need to feel stronger and more comfortable in these uncertain times.

Throughout this unusual fall semester, as college campuses witness a spike in coronavirus cases, contact tracers have become an essential tool in the fight to stop the spread.
At times, however, that task has proved to be overwhelming: An outbreak at a big party can mean hundreds of phone calls. So for help, colleges across the United States are turning to their own students.

In 2019, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) realized it had been using an out-of-date formula that caused low-income students to receive less state need-based aid than they were eligible to receive. Subsequent fixes were made that resulted in a drastic change to state appropriation for financial aid, with specific benefit to low-income students.
In this interview, Tom Allison of SCHEV shares what transpired and what state postsecondary policy and data leaders might learn from his experience.