Daily Lumina News 081122

An “alarming” number of people are rejecting college—and it could widen the fissures already polarizing American society.
A little-understood backlash against higher education is driving an unprecedented decline in enrollment that experts now warn is likely to diminish people’s quality of life and the nation’s economic competitiveness, especially in places where the slide is most severe.

Ahead of the new school year, colleges across the country are repurposing the tools they developed during the pandemic to address the monkeypox outbreak, which the White House recently declared a public health emergency.
It's a different virus, with different risks, and colleges are having to adapt, says Dr. Lindsey Mortenson of the American College Health Association.

Aaron Rasmussen is the founder and CEO of Outlier, a company that produces cinematic college-level online courses with rockstar academics like mathematicians Hannah Fry and John Urschel.
Outlier has now formed a transfer network of 18 colleges, including the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Bellevue University, in an attempt to fix a broken system of transfer credit. Experts applaud the company's efforts, but its for-profit nature may limit acceptance by some institutions.

More than one-fifth of all college students are student parents. That’s nearly 4 million college students with children. In between taking classes, millions of these individuals hold part-time or full-time jobs while also managing the tasks of raising a family.
For many student parents, a strong campus support system is a deciding factor in whether they complete a degree or credential. A new report from The Education Trust offers a snapshot of several ways in which institutions and policymakers can improve the college-going experience for student parents.

Colleges have considered applicants’ race in admission decisions for decades. Starting next year, that could be curtailed or even illegal, depending on the outcome of cases before the Supreme Court.
Institutions seeking to boost diversity are now looking at new ways to recruit applicants. Among their strategies: Proactively offering spots to students before they apply and forging relationships with churches and community centers.

A college education is now the second-largest expense an individual is likely to make in a lifetime—right after purchasing a home. But it wasn’t always that way.
The Biden administration has promised to make a decision on student loan forgiveness within weeks, or even days. And yet, college affordability will remain an issue for years to come, experts say.