Daily Lumina News 030521

Sherry Heidary teaches a chemistry class at Union County College. On this day, she encourages one student to believe in herself. She then gently chides a latecomer who didn’t turn in an assignment.
The lesson behind the lesson: They all belong. There in the lab, there at Union County College, there on the path to a degree. It’s an urgent message for community colleges everywhere as they struggle to fill classes after a shocking nationwide enrollment plunge in the fall that educators blame on the coronavirus crisis and economic and social upheaval.

Companies hire thousands of business-school graduates every year only to spend months catching them up in the specific demands and skills of the job.
Now some of the biggest professional-services firms are changing tack to ensure their new-graduate hires are ready from the start or their existing employees have the skills to move onto bigger roles: They are customizing their own graduate-degree programs with training in company-tailored skill sets and real-time project work in lieu of traditional case studies.

What defines a generation? War? Recession? If big events become part of our life stories, how does a pandemic affect those who are just coming of age?
To find out, journalists followed a group of 21-year-olds from around the world to understand how this period in time is altering their lives and how they are coping.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected virtually every facet of higher education. It’s tougher to teach. It’s certainly tougher to learn. Many campuses have sat largely empty.
COVID-19 also is prompting new waves of thinking about the college admissions process. It has forced colleges to confront an already present question: Should SAT and ACT scores affect admissions?

Peer mentors, advisors, and other supports are crucial to helping first-generation students, student-parents, and other vulnerable college students graduate. Without it, many students find themselves forced to give up on their college dreams.
That support costs money, however. That's why Janine Davidson of Metropolitan State University Denver took a stand this year before the Colorado legislature’s powerful Joint Budget Committee.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) talks about the recent past, present, and future of higher education legislation under his committee’s purview, including COVID-19 relief funding, doubling the maximum Pell Grant, “second chance” Pell for incarcerated individuals, and more.