Daily Lumina News 020421

Today’s postsecondary education system is out of sync with what our nation needs—as surveys of students, employers, and others show.
In recent years a group of colleges started offering a mix of programs challenging the notion that college credentials must come in neat two-year or four-year packages. The institutions, which mix certificate, two-year and four-year programs, offer a novel approach in a postsecondary ecosystem that needs to adapt, write Lumina Foundation's Jamie Merisotis and Carrie Besnette Hauser of Colorado Mountain College in this op-ed.

With the now nearly yearlong pandemic causing major disruptions in education, employment, housing and more, young people who are no longer adolescents but not quite adults are struggling to find their footing.
An 18-year-old in Florida selected a college sight unseen. A 23-year-old in Texas lost his job in his dream industry. And for a 24-year-old in New Hampshire, the pandemic halted her hard-won academic and social momentum. The impact varies, person to person, place to place.

Last week, Ayiana Davis Polen finally set foot on the campus of Spelman College—a historically Black liberal arts school for women in Atlanta. She's a freshman there but had started her college experience last fall taking classes from her bedroom in Puerto Rico.
Spelman, like many colleges across the United States, is beefing up its in-person offerings for the spring semester. For Davis Polen, that means her first taste of the college experience she has always envisioned.

Aimée Eubanks Davis is a firm believer in the "network effect"—and its potential for solving the education-to-employment gap in higher education.
Davis is the founder and CEO of Braven, a nonprofit that helps low-income students prepare for their post-college job hunt. In this interview, she talks about Braven's unique partnership model with universities and employers—plus how Braven has responded to the economic crisis new graduates face.

Wisconsin has 16 technical colleges and 49 campuses that serve hundreds of thousands of students each year. As the pandemic continues, many of these students are now wondering when they will finish their classes and if they will pursue new degree programs amid a pandemic economy.
Morna K. Foy, president of Wisconsin’s technical college system, discusses state funding, a push to improve equity in higher education, pandemic-driven shifts in student enrollment, and how campuses are working to address future workforce needs.

Their senior year of high school was upended by the coronavirus. Now freshman year of college has been transformed, too. For these students, feeling frozen in place has become the new normal.
College presidents, meanwhile, are worried about the virus’ toll not just on their students, but also on their institutions’ finances—concerns that portend significant challenges for higher education going forward, experts say.