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Food insecurity has been called an invisible epidemic on today's college campuses, causing many students to underperform academically, suffer stress, and abandon their college dreams altogether.
In response, some institutions are turning to on-campus farms and gardens. Two examples of initiatives—Paul Quinn College in a large city and Piedmont Community College in a rural area—demonstrate how colleges can use creative solutions to promote better access to fresh food and cultivate new skills for their students.

Mohamud Diini had plans to bolt for a warmer climate after graduating from Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. But one thing pulled him back: a new state program that pays him $2,500 a year toward the $20,000 of student loans he owes as long as he stays and works in the state for at least two years.
That’s exactly what lawmakers behind the student loan repayment effort hope. So do their counterparts in other states with aging populations and worker shortages. Some are dangling incentives of $100,000 to help pay off the student loan debt of college graduates if they agree to stay.

Truly serving students means helping them as individuals, responding with flexible programs to address how life so often happens in educationally inconvenient ways. Doing that means better help for today’s students, who are more likely than ever to be working and caring for families.
But it also means a higher education system less focused on the idea of just counting credentials—as good a success metric as that seems. We need to vigorously champion credentials of value that advance economic opportunity and career mobility, says Lumina Foundation's Jamie Merisotis in his latest column for Forbes.

People in prison who are able to pursue postsecondary education transcend both their insular surroundings and improve their post-release opportunities. And now, for the first time in nearly three decades, these individuals have expanded access to the federal Pell Grant to help pay for the cost of education programs.
Every eligible student should be able to take advantage of this breakthrough, yet incarcerated women face unique challenges in their pursuit of higher education.

Americans are losing their faith in higher education. In a recent Wall Street Journal poll, more than half of respondents said that a bachelor’s degree isn’t worth the cost. Young people were the most skeptical.
American higher education certainly has its challenges. But the bad vibes around college threaten to obscure an important economic reality: Most young people are still far better off with a four-year college degree than without one, writes labor economist David Deming in this perspective piece.

Everyone saw the wrecking ball coming. It loomed over higher education for decades, poised to demolish a specific set of ideas about educational equity and the benefits of racial diversity. And when it finally struck— when the U.S. Supreme Court announced the end of race-conscious admissions—many Americans felt its force in their gut.
A summer of uncertainty has given way to an anxious fall. College presidents, enrollment officials, high school counselors, and applicants now find themselves in a liminal zone between two eras. The next one might bring bold new commitments to enrolling and supporting more underrepresented students—or retrenchment amid intense fears of future lawsuits.