Daily Lumina News 051021

As a counselor, Matthew Miltenberg hears from some of his Poudre High School students that they can't visualize college in their future. Miltenberg hopes the announcement of President Joe Biden’s proposal to make community college free will dramatically change that perception.
In Colorado, as in the rest of the nation, the coronavirus crisis has led to a sharp decline in community college enrollment, especially among students of color and those from low-income backgrounds.

Last fall, several reporters from The New York Times set out to make a podcast about one Texas high school’s reopening. The state was one of the first to mandate a return to the classroom.
The group followed Odessa High School for months. They planned to cover a public health crisis. But in the process, they captured the sounds of another crisis: a mental health crisis.

Prior learning assessment (PLA) is college credit that students can receive for learning that takes place outside of the classroom—including knowledge and skills from work, life, and military experiences.
The challenge is that only 10 percent of adults who go back to school actually use PLA. Many say they never knew it existed.

Will California colleges return to normal after the coronavirus pandemic? Lande Ajose hopes not.
Ajose, a higher ed policy advisor to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is part of a task force responsible for recasting today’s challenges as an opportunity to help California’s economy recover with a postsecondary ecosystem that is more equitable, more resilient, and more coordinated.

For months, colleges have weighed the risks and rewards of bringing students back to campuses disrupted by COVID-19. Now they’re considering what to do about their employees.
Committees at colleges and universities across the country are evaluating the future of work, asking to what extent staff and some faculty members could remain virtual and what that would mean for life on campus and off. The decision also could have broad implications for recruiting and campus density.

Nicole Lynn Lewis felt overwhelmed and isolated as a young single mom in college. Now she runs an organization designed to help teen parents get the financial and emotional support they need to thrive.
Last year, Lewis was named one of the inaugural awardees of the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund in recognition of her work addressing structural and systemic racism in America. In this interview, Lewis reflects on her new memoir about teen motherhood and college, plus the disproportionate impact of student debt on Black borrowers and their families.