Daily Lumina News 061722

Nationwide, fewer high school seniors are choosing to enroll in college immediately after graduation. In some states, not even half of high school graduates are pursuing higher education, according to the latest data available.
Enrollment experts, state higher education officials, and college counselors weigh in on why the enrollment drop is happening and what can be done to turn things around.

More than 9,000 incarcerated students have earned a certificate or diploma through the Second Chance Pell initiative, according to a report from the Vera Institute of Justice.
The U.S. Department of Education launched the Second Chance Pell Initiative in 2015 and expanded the program three times in the last four years. In July 2023, the FAFSA Simplification Act will enable all incarcerated students to access federal Pell Grants for the first time since 1994.

For decades, society has paid low wages for the jobs of caring for others—teaching young children, caring for infants or the elderly, providing support to families as a counselor or social worker. The real reward, it was implied, had more to do with the personal satisfaction of helping others.
Meanwhile, colleges didn’t need to think about the ethics or moral implications of that reasoning. Their job was to provide education for people interested in those fields—and to help their region’s economy by providing the trained workers needed. That thinking may be shifting.

Tommy Esquivel graduated from Hollywood High School in Southern California last week with awards honoring his determination and his academic success. Despite his achievements, he is passing up career-building opportunities because of his undocumented status.
For the first time, a majority of the undocumented immigrants graduating from high schools across the United States have none of the protections offered over the past 10 years under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh wants to use work-based learning opportunities such as apprenticeships to re-engage students who left school during the COVID pandemic and get them on a career path.
The challenge, he says, is reaching them.

As a young child in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, Freeman Hrabowski had a love for education. The lessons he learned from his parents—both teachers—shaped his ambitions to become an educator and ultimately led him to the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Hrabowski will retire later this month after more than three decades as president of UMBC. He looks back at a lifetime of service—and what the future may hold for UMBC and his successor.