Daily Lumina News 021624

The reasons that students leave college are many and complicated. Some find themselves academically unprepared, laboring to keep up with their coursework, while others can’t shoulder the costs. Some are directionless, racking up a hodgepodge of credits with no clear idea of what to study; others flounder socially or struggle with mental-health challenges. And for people like Timothy A. Duff, life happens.
Likewise, the forces preventing many of America's 40 million college dropouts from returning to college are complex and the barriers high.

Women of color make up 13 percent of the population in Rochester, Minnesota, but less than 1 percent work in the construction industry.
That reality is not lost on Diamond Harriel. Thanks to a city initiative designed to help women of color build careers in the construction industry, the single mom is now getting the training and child care support she needs to fulfill her dreams of working on affordable housing projects for the community.

As it continues to work out the technical glitches associated with the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, the U.S. Department of Education is ramping up efforts to give colleges more FAFSA-related support.
That support, including plans to relax some compliance requirements, comes as members of Congress are stepping up calls for the agency to do more to remedy issues with the new financial aid application. But the plan does not address the challenges some families are still facing in accessing the form.

Despite the best of intentions, the majority of students who start at a community college never successfully transfer to a four-year institution. Of those who do transfer, 48 percent will earn a bachelor’s degree within six years.
The Alamo Colleges District in Texas is working to improve those statistics with detailed online transfer guides that provide step-by-step information for students looking to transfer to a four-year institution. So far, the initiative has saved students more than $370 million and cut their hours to degree by 30 credits, administrators say.

While headlines cite the demise of the college degree, a new report from The Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School's Project on Managing the Future of Work reveals a different reality.
The report specifically aims to answer a question that has been looming over the “skills-based hiring” movement since it began: Companies are dropping degree requirements, but how much are they actually hiring people without diplomas into those jobs? The answer: Not very much.

When Alicia Garcia first enrolled at College of the Desert, she felt lost. Her first semester grades at the California community college were not good, she says, and she didn’t know much about financial aid or academic advising.
But when one of her professors announced an opportunity for students to participate in a research internship to study young people’s well-being and civic engagement in the Coachella Valley, everything changed for Garcia.