Daily Lumina News 101620

An extraordinary demographic shift is sweeping through U.S. university campuses as immigrants and children of immigrants become an ever-larger share of student bodies. This new reality spells implications for the future of the country’s workforce, higher education, and efforts to reduce racial and economic inequality.

Many Californians face difficulties connecting to good jobs because of limited education. This is especially true for families who receive cash assistance from the state’s CalWORKs (California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids) program.
A new report examines the role California’s community colleges play in building skills and credentials to support the economic mobility of CalWORKs parents.

Chicago Public Schools is launching a new effort to create a more diverse workforce by steering students toward teaching careers in the district.
About half of the district’s educators are white, even though more than 80 percent of its students are Black or Latino. The district is partnering with City Colleges of Chicago and Illinois State University to offer scholarships, financial and career counseling, and eventually preferential hiring to district graduates.

Many veterans who head back to school after leaving the military face unique challenges that come with being a student veteran. Oftentimes, their experiences are ignored and undervalued. Instead, institutions should see veterans as an asset to the college culture, say two professors and authors of a study on student veterans.
In this interview, Katie Sullivan and Kay Yoon discuss what it means to become military-friendly—and how higher education leaders can focus more on these lifelong learners.

The COVID pandemic has changed the definition of college, and many students are feeling the repercussions with increased anxiety and mental health issues.
Elfred Anthony Pinkard, president of Wilberforce University, talks about how his students are coping with the pandemic, as well as the nation's racial reckoning. Dr. Alan Dennington, a chief medical officer at TimelyMD, joins the conversation with his perspective on the spike in demand for mental health counseling among students.

The country is facing two major workforce crises—one immediate, the other longer-term—that America’s community and technical colleges are uniquely equipped to address.
In this op-ed, Robert Schwartz of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Jobs for the Future calls on community colleges to step up and address these challenges—and shares recommendations from a recent report on how they can do so.