Photo: Caleb Santiago Alvarado

On any random day, Liz Franczyk can be found putting out fires for students. Franczyk isn’t a financial aid officer, nor does she disburse institutional dollars. She’s an adjunct Spanish instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College and executive director of the FAST Fund, which stands for Faculty and Students Together. 

For many students, the small grant program is a literal lifeline—one that spells the difference between dropping out and staying enrolled, between having an apartment and having nowhere to sleep, between hope and game over.

The University of California will spend the next six months debating a proposal to hire undocumented students for jobs across the 10-campus system.

If approved, undocumented students will have the same access as other students to research and other campus jobs. Critics believe it could encourage unauthorized immigration. Jeffry Umaña Muñoz, an undocumented student at the University of California, Los Angeles, weighs in.

College programs that leave graduates underpaid or buried in loans will be cut off from federal money under a proposal issued last week by the Biden administration. However, the rules apply only to for-profit colleges and a tiny fraction of programs at traditional universities.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Education are calling the measure a significant step toward accountability for the nation's colleges. Others say the scope is still too narrow to help most students.