Daily Lumina News 072023

With the gutting of affirmative action, stepping up allyship for Black and brown students as they strive to get into and through college is more urgent than ever.
It starts with dismantling the myths about affirmative action, writes Steven Colón of Bottom Line in this op-ed.

In the past decade, as the print-textbook market has become less profitable, publishers like Pearson, Cengage, and McGraw Hill have increasingly shifted to digital offerings like courseware. Costs vary depending on the subject and publisher arrangement, but can exceed $200.
For proponents of courseware, it’s just another material cost, and one that’s worth the price tag for the additional practice and immediate feedback the tools provide. But for students already struggling to afford college, courseware can add to the burden.

Education can—and does—have a transformative effect, both in prison and after release. It helps people succeed and thrive during reentry, reduces poverty, strengthens public safety—all the while saving taxpayer dollars.
In this essay, the U.S. Department of Education's Amy Loyd and Amy L. Solomon of the U.S. Department of Justice discuss the game-changing potential of once again giving incarcerated students access to federal Pell Grants—and why the program's success is dependent on buy-in from prison administrators and the active support of colleges and universities.

Last summer, in the space of about 20 minutes, President Joe Biden laid out his plan to forgive student loan debt for more than 40 million borrowers.
Roughly a year later and with that plan undone by the U.S. Supreme Court, a very different process for erasing debt on such a wide scale begins. It’s expected to take months, if not longer. The resulting rule may also face legal challenges, which could drag things out even further.

Students have long been targets of so-called phishing scams, in which the perpetrator attempts to trick victims into revealing their log-in or other private credentials by pretending to be a legitimate company or figure.
Phishing is once again on the rise. Besides threatening to shut down email accounts, scammers are now offering students jobs—often with better pay and more flexibility than they could find on campus. After assigning some menial tasks, they generally send their victims fraudulent paychecks before claiming to have overpaid them and demanding the money be returned.

It’s been a couple weeks since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against race-conscious policies in college admissions. How will the country’s top schools continue to promote diversity?
On this episode of Reset, two professors and equity scholars discuss the change and its impact on future students in higher education and in the workplace.