Daily Lumina News 102822

In 2010, a book called DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education envisioned a wholesale shift in the way people learn. More than a decade later, how has that panned out?
The latest episode of The Key explores this question with the book's author, Anya Kamenetz, who weighs in on the current landscape of higher ed and what she got right and wrong 12 years ago.

The U.S. Department of Education has released final regulations that spell out how colleges can lay the groundwork for enrolling some of the more than 700,000 incarcerated people who are expected to become eligible next summer to apply for Pell Grants to pay for college.
In a statement applauding the new regulations, the Vera Institute for Justice says that access to college in prison improves students’ sense of worth and skills, reduces the odds of recidivism, and increases graduates’ employment and earning potential on release.

A nursing program at the Eastern Maine Community College partners with rural hospitals to provide nursing education close to home for students who would rather not come into the city.
Now in its sixth year, the program is helping the community college increase enrollment in a job that’s in great demand. And it's reaching students who might otherwise struggle with transportation costs and family responsibilities.

Advocates of competency-based education believe that colleges should award credits based on assessing what students know rather than how many hours they’ve spent in class. Yet, despite getting some buzz every few years, the idea has remained a relatively small-scale phenomenon.
Could this post-pandemic moment lead to broader adoption of the idea?

Major changes could be coming to community colleges in Texas—with lawmakers set to consider a proposal that would modernize the state’s 50-year-old funding model and put jobs and “value” front and center.
The state’s community colleges have long been starved for resources. The new proposal aims to boost state funding by $650 million—and tie much of it to economic outcomes.

What we think and believe is, in part, a product of the content that we consume. This information shapes, reinforces, and redresses commonly held narratives—those underlying beliefs and attitudes that drive human behavior—about higher education and the workforce.
Two experts on narrative research discuss the major narratives and counter-narratives that exist in America today, what drives them, and the implications these narratives have on individual and institutional behavior.