Daily Lumina News 031224

For student parents, access to the kind of child care that Head Start provides can remove serious barriers to getting a degree. And yet, out of about 3,000 community college campuses in the United States, only about 100 have on-site Head Start centers. That's despite plenty of opportunity: There are more than 16,000 Head Start centers in the country, and it's not uncommon for them to relocate to address shifts in need.
A new five-year initiative between the Association of Community College Trustees and the National Head Start Association plans to grow campus collaborations.

From complex general education requirements to early application deadlines, transferring from community college to California State University, Northridge proved to be a confusing process for Vanessa Rivera.
A new tool is designed to address that confusion and frustration, helping students like Rivera map out their path to a college in the Cal State system.

In 2021, Congress tasked the Biden administration with carrying out one of the most consequential updates to the federal financial aid system.
The project was ambitious. The budget was lean. But delivering the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid—a simpler, shorter version of the decades-old form—could have been a major win for the administration. Instead, it has been a major headache.

Nonacademic undergraduate workers now represent more than one-third of all the student employees who have unionized since the start of 2022. That’s a huge shift in just the past eight months.
The burgeoning movement among undergraduate workers is significant because they work in jobs across the college, not just in classrooms and in labs. And these campaigns have the potential to spur on the wave of unionization in the United States across industries outside of academe, say experts.

Idaho legislators are ramping up scrutiny of a deal for the University of Idaho to purchase the University of Phoenix, raising concerns about the secretive process and legal liabilities.
Expediency is crucial for the purchase. If the University of Idaho fails to finalize the purchase by May 31, either party has the option to walk away. If it fails, UI will be out more than $10 million in legal costs already incurred on the deal.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ended race-conscious admissions programs last year, lawmakers in various states quickly turned their attention to legacy preferences. Earlier this month, Virginia became the second state to ban legacy admissions, after Colorado.
Massachusetts lawmakers are now working to institute similar bans. Reporter Max Larkin discusses the bill's background and how it's being received in the state's education communities.