Daily Lumina News 052323

Black students face huge barriers in getting to and through college and gaining a strong economic foothold. These obstacles include the cost of higher education, the disproportionate debt Black students and families take on, and the discrimination and lack of belonging.
This reality must be changed, writes Karen Stout of Achieving the Dream in this op-ed. To do so requires a commitment to raise awareness of solutions and introduce policies that will reverse the trending inequity, she says.

Across the country, spring graduation season highlights the swiftly tilting academic landscape. Cap-and-gown roll-calls for computer science and other technology-centered disciplines are becoming ever lengthier, and for the humanities, ever shorter.
Some schools are taking radical steps to adjust.

Sonya Christian doesn’t officially begin her new role as California's Community College Chancellor until next month, but she's already planning several bold reforms. Chief among them: expanding dual-enrollment numbers.
Currently, just 6 percent of California students take a college course through dual enrollment during their first year of high school. Christian wants to dramatically change those statistics by automatically enrolling all 436,192 of the state’s eighth graders in a college course next fall.

Three Historically Black Colleges and Universities—Howard University, Spelman College, and Morehouse College—are joining a national initiative that brings free courses for college credit to high schools serving large numbers of low-income students.
HBCU leaders say the effort, led by the National Education Equity Lab, is an opportunity to further their mission and scout prospective students who might not have initially considered college at all.

For weeks, dozens of Florida Dreamers traveled to Tallahassee to speak face-to-face with lawmakers and encourage them to keep in place a law that allows residents brought to the United States as children to qualify for in-state college tuition.
Britney Ortiz and Aquiles Barreto, who are recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, describe what the recent victory means for them and other Dreamers.

As the idea of free community college gains traction across the country, some lawmakers are getting bolder in their concepts by expanding existing programs or pitching legislation that will offer free college to anyone.
The latest example is Massachusetts, where Democratic Gov. Maura Healey’s 2024 budget includes a proposed $20 million to expand the state’s free community college program for any student over the age of 25 without a college degree.