Daily Lumina News 110221

For more than 11 years, colleges have fought off attempts to hold them accountable for the most basic measure of student success: whether what graduates learn will provide them with the gainful employment they need to make it worth the price.
But now, in the age of data, information has quietly become available to students, families, and consumer advocates that allows them to make those calculations themselves.

COVID-19 has underscored a critical fact in higher education: The traditional college experience no longer meets the needs of most students.
In this op-ed, Lumina Foundation's Danette Howard says we should seize this opportunity to permanently restructure the college learning experience into one that meets the complex needs of today's students and prepares them for an increasingly remote workforce.

Factory workers, nurses, and school bus drivers are among the tens of thousands of Americans who walked off jobs in October amid a surge of labor activism that economists and labor leaders have dubbed “Striketober.”
The strike drives, experts say, stem from the new leverage workers hold in the nation’s tight job market: Having seen the massive profits their companies collected during the coronavirus pandemic, they want their contributions acknowledged in the form of better pay and working conditions.

Every five minutes, one Latinx person in America turns 18.
That’s according to Dr. Evans Igho Akpo of the Latinx Success Institute in Palmview, Texas. Akpo recently addressed the annual Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities conference where he shared insight on what schools can do to accelerate Latinx student success. At the top of his list: create a sense of belonging.

Maine community college officials say that a robust job market is part of the reason behind a nearly 6 percent drop in enrollment this fall.
The decline in Maine is part of a larger trend at colleges and universities across the country. In response, more institutions are developing ways to educate people while they're working, such as creating new training programs and partnering with businesses.

After several years prosecuting federal civil rights cases as an assistant United States attorney in New York City, Leslie Cornfeld turned her attention to fighting for what she saw as the most fundamental civil right of all: equity in education.
Two years ago, Cornfeld launched the National Education Equity Lab to help more low-income and first-generation high school students make the jump to selective colleges.