Daily Lumina News 120523

Every year, hundreds of thousands of students in community colleges have plans to transfer to a four-year institution and complete their bachelor’s degree. Just 31 percent will cross that finish line.
A new report from the Campaign for College Opportunity examines today's community college-to-university transfer pathway, gaps in transfer student experiences, and the ways colleges and policy leaders can remove barriers to promote equitable access to a bachelor’s degree and beyond.

Only 5.7 percent of U.S. physicians are Black; 6.9 percent are Latino or Hispanic. Those numbers are taking on heightened significance following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to end affirmative action practices in college admissions at all public institutions in the United States.
Medical schools across the country are now scrambling to adjust admission standards to abide by the new law of the land. Some are ramping up outreach efforts to applicants, employing dedicated pathway programs, and creating partnerships, curriculum, and programs specifically built to serve underserved populations.

In 2015, when it was time for Kimara Shields’ daughter to decide what to do after high school, Shields didn’t hesitate: The teenager would go to college.
Like many working-class couples across the country, Shields and her husband had incomes to cover the basic needs of their household but little else. Yet the aid their daughter received covered only a snippet of the full cost of attendance at Stevenson University. One of them would have to go into debt to afford the rest.

In Florida, more professors are giving up coveted tenured positions and blaming their departures on Governor Ron DeSantis and his efforts to reshape the higher education system to fit his conservative principles.
Interviews with a dozen professors—in fields ranging from law to psychology to agronomy—reveal that many are heading to blue states. While emphasizing that hundreds of top academics remain in Florida, their resignations raise concerns that the governor’s policies are becoming increasingly untenable for scholars and students.

A failure to update the federal guidelines used to calculate eligibility for financial aid could result in students’ receiving less scholarship and grant money for college next school year.
The mistake is the latest hiccup in the U.S. Department of Education's implementation of a three-year-old bipartisan law to simplify and ease requirements for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

Facing the future as a young person is exciting. And daunting. In this interview, four students share their stories and experiences about postsecondary planning and whether they’re pursuing college, a job, or another aspiration.
While their goals seem succinct, the students do not have a perfectly clear road map for how to get there. Some are grappling with the choice between what they think they should be doing to be successful versus following opportunities that spark their passions.