Daily Lumina News 122120

Zaq Woodward is a 33-year-old electrical engineering student at Pasadena City College. He lives on Social Security in a single-resident apartment in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo. It's a tiny flat—with a shared bath in the hall, but it’s still a step up. He's no longer homeless, living in his car.
For many students like Woodward, pursuing higher education was a struggle even before the pandemic. Today, as shown in this photo essay of five low-income students, the college challenge is immense.

COVID-19 touched off a financial wildfire for colleges, fanned by short-term losses and expenses but fueled by the fundamental fiscal challenges that many institutions have been facing—or failing to face—for some time. As the days and weeks turned into months, and the short-term emergency became a long-term state of existence, the pandemic exposed the gulf between higher ed’s haves and have-nots.
It also revealed long-ignored income and racial disparities at colleges and a widening national political divide symbolized by the college credential.

Principal Josh Tripp is grateful for the late-arriving students at Bucksport High School. In a year when school is half online, sports and clubs have been curtailed, and the world can seem as cold and gray as a winter morning in this sparsely populated coastal town, showing up is a big deal.
In rural communities like this one, the uncertainty of the pandemic year is translating into more than teenage angst. It’s driving a dramatic drop in the proportion of students going on to college, threatening the already precarious economies of rural areas and widening their socioeconomic drift from urban and suburban America.

Higher education advocates cite many reasons for the community college enrollment drop this fall, ranging from conflicts with work and family obligations—especially during the pandemic—to lack of reliable internet access.
The latest enrollment information also highlights enrollments by majors—and raises some concerns about whether workers will have the needed skills for certain key industries when the economy rebounds.