Daily Lumina News 061623

When you hear about the U.S.-Mexico border, it's often in reference to migration and protocols designed to keep people in place—walls, barricades, asylum hearings. But for Carlos Tenorio and thousands of other students who live in Mexico and go to college in the United States, crossing the border is part of their daily commute.
It takes a special dedication for these students to get to class each day. Tenorio, who attends Southwestern College in Chula Vista, California, describes what that arduous process is like in this interview.

For thousands of high school graduates, this time of year is all about looking to the future—namely, preparing for college in the fall. Their undocumented peers, however, might feel like they’re going backward.
This year marks the first time since 2012 that the federal policy giving immigrant youth who lack permanent legal status in the United States the ability to work and pay for college has been effectively cut off.

As a Black student raised by a single mother, Makia Green believes she benefited from a college admissions program that gave preference to students of color from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. And, as a borrower who still owes just over $20,000 on her undergraduate student loans, she has been counting on President Joe Biden’s promised debt relief.
Now, both affirmative action and the student loan cancellation plan could soon be dismantled by the U.S. Supreme Court. To Green and many other people of color, the efforts to roll them back reflect a larger backlash to racial progress in higher education.

Research shows that higher education is the surest route to the middle class and national success. But today, for the first time, many Americans are questioning the value of higher education. In multiple polls and surveys, we see responses like “it’s unnecessary;” “it’s no longer relevant;” “it’s a poor value;” “it’s not worth it.”
Our responsibility is not to defend what should not need to be defended. Instead, it’s up to us to make a much more forceful case for what higher education is for, says Lumina Foundation President and CEO Jamie Merisotis.

Some news articles, surveys, and Twitter threads suggest that cheating with ChatGPT has become rampant in higher education, and professors already feel overwhelmed and defeated. But the real story appears to be much more nuanced.
The Chronicle recently asked instructors to share their experiences with ChatGPT and how students are using it. Did professors see much cheating? Are they incorporating ChatGPT into their teaching? How do they plan to modify their coursework to reckon with AI this fall? Responses are all over the map.

The space for performance-based funding is growing, with Oregon and Texas becoming the latest states to embrace the funding formula as a way to incentivize schools to improve student outcomes.
Approximately 30 states now have outcomes-based funding formulas, and the majority apply them to community colleges. Higher ed experts say these kinds of models have changed considerably in recent years, shifting to more equity-minded metrics.