Daily Lumina News 042720

With the pandemic forcing colleges and universities to close their campuses, many institutions are meeting this unprecedented moment with a renewed sense of purpose about their role in the community.
Faculty and staff members, as well as students, are contributing and producing medical equipment, preparing buildings for use as health-care facilities, providing Wi-Fi to local residents, and offering services like public information, small-business support, legal aid, and spiritual counseling.

Southern New Hampshire University made headlines last week when it announced plans to give incoming freshmen a year of free tuition and have them take online classes while otherwise participating in campus life.
The change, which is for the online giant's residential program, was designed to blunt the pandemic's economic impact for some students. And it comes as many colleges are pressed to weigh similar considerations. At the same time, the move could help Southern New Hampshire test the waters of a plan to merge in-person and online instruction in a new way.

Thousands of California college students who lost their jobs due to the pandemic are struggling to afford food, broadband service, child care, and other living expenses. They are students like Josh Zupan, a fourth-year art and ecology major at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Before the coronavirus, Zupan had an on-campus facilities and maintenance job that paid about $300 every two weeks. Then, the health crisis forced him to take mandatory leave.
These students are counting on federal emergency aid to provide a possible solution to their financial troubles. Some will be disappointed.

The disruption caused by the coronavirus has prompted cobbled-together responses ranging from the absurd to the ingenious at colleges and universities struggling to continue teaching even as their students have receded into diminutive images, in dire need of haircuts, on videoconference checkerboards.
But while all of this is widely being referred to as online higher education, that’s not really what most of it is, at least so far. As for predictions that it will trigger a permanent exodus from brick-and-mortar campuses to virtual classrooms, indications are that it probably won’t.