Daily Lumina News 052521

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Following his death, administrators at colleges and universities scrambled to issue statements condemning the murder and vowing that they would use the incident as a moment to address systemic racism on their own campuses.
One year later, college leaders reflect on the ways they have confronted race and racism within the higher education sector.

When Lily Nagengast left her rural hometown in Nebraska to attend college in Boston, she traded a high school class of 18 students—the same 18 students she'd known her entire life—for a class of 1,000-plus. She says a conversation with the dean marked the first time anyone had acknowledged that her path to higher education was unusual.
Because of that conversation—and the rarity of it—Nagengast realized that perspectives like hers are needed to bridge the gap between rural America and higher education.

COVID-19 has disproportionately harmed Black communities. And one year ago today, in the midst of the first COVID-related shutdown, George Floyd was murdered. Just before that came the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
Since then, Black students have had to grapple with constant, hard-to-process societal conversations about police brutality and racial injustice. During this harrowing year, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) provided a haven—offering students a sense of familiarity, racial relief, and faculty members who resemble them. HBCUs are places where Black lives have always mattered.

Call it "the half century college plan." It's taken Jules Means all of her adult life to finally have the time and resources to earn her degree at the University of California, Berkeley at age 67.
She's not alone. The age wave of Americans 50 and older has been sweeping across college campuses for both personal and professional reasons. After a lifetime of work, these older adults are now catching up on missed educational opportunities.

Even as millions of people remain out of work, businesses of all types report difficulty finding workers to fill available jobs. But are expanded unemployment benefits really to blame?
Experts in economics, recruiting, and other fields offer their thoughts on what’s making it hard for many U.S. businesses to hire right now—and what they can do to fix it.

Madison Area Technical College has a proposition for students unsure whether to enroll: Attend classes for a week and, if they're not a fit, drop them at no cost.
The free trial is one of several ways community colleges are reducing financial risk for students to get them in the door during a turbulent time. The stakes are high. Overall enrollment at public two-year schools fell 10 percent last fall, while the number of first-time students was down 21 percent.