Daily Lumina News 120720

When colleges made the shift to online learning in the spring because of COVID-19, so much remained in question. How did the new coronavirus spread? What were the effects? Could colleges open for in-person instruction in the 2020-21 academic year, and what would happen if they did?
As the fall term comes to a close, hard-earned answers shed insight that may shape institutions’ responses both to the coming spring semester and to pandemics and other public-health threats in the future.

The American Council on Education is building a network of colleges to work on transferring credit for students' prior learning experiences.
The project aims to help learners who often bring credits from several institutions or their life experiences. This includes students over the age of 25, as well as those who are working full time, financially independent, or connected with the military. The council's program will focus on awarding credit for their prior experiences, including apprenticeships and corporate training.

Marcia McCallum’s initial experiences at Austin Community College illustrate how older students are often perceived in higher education. When enrolling, younger students assumed she had come to sign up her children. On the first day, other students thought she was the professor.
Today's education and training systems are ill-suited for the more than one-third of the nation’s college students who are older than 25, asserts Lumina Foundation's Jamie Merisotis in this op-ed. We urgently need to address this disconnect if we are to have any hope of a rapid economic rebound when the pandemic eases. That means meeting these students where they are.

From a young age, students in suburban and urban communities marinate in college-going, even college-competitive, environments. That is often missing in rural America, where communities can treat high school as a capstone, not a steppingstone.
A Tennessee model is changing this reality with a straightforward approach: Put a counselor—someone raised rural and connected to the community—in a local high school to help every student craft a career plan, then guide them through the tasks required to apply for—and pay for—a postsecondary degree.

The next Secretary of Education has a formidable task ahead. He or she will have to repair a damaged department, navigate a difficult Congress, and deliver on President-elect Joe Biden’s promises of free college and addressing student loan debt.
Max Lubin, CEO of the student advocacy organization, Rise, argues that California’s Community College Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley is the ideal candidate for the job.

Hoping to curb lagging enrollment figures at Texas higher education institutions, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and Educate Texas are launching a new initiative called Future Focused Texas.
The collaborative effort provides free research-based digital content to school counselors to help their students graduate and enroll in college. FFT also will facilitate access to Texas’ statewide virtual advising chatbot, ADVi.