Daily Lumina News 081721

Across America, students at community colleges are dropping out of institutions due to financial stressors. According to recent data collected by the Center for Community College Student Engagement (CCCSE), roughly half work 20-plus hours a week. Sixty-three percent say they live paycheck to paycheck.
For many of these students, minimum wage increases, scholarship opportunities, federal relief funding, and local community outreach and connections can be the deciding factor of whether they persist to a degree or credential.

The start of the academic year is normally a time for convocations to welcome new students to college—and to welcome faculty back.
This year is starting with more uncertainty than even last year. The arrival of the Delta variant has changed plans for some colleges, while prompting others to impose mask requirements or vaccine requirements. But because the Delta variant can be spread even to those who have been vaccinated, there are no guarantees of a COVID-19-free semester for anyone.

The number of prospective immigrants who were deemed “inadmissible” because they might become a “public charge,” dependent on government benefits, skyrocketed between 2017 and 2019.
The changes that were made under the revised immigration policy have now been reversed under President Joe Biden. But the effects still remain. For the three oldest children of José Ruiz Arévalos, it meant putting their college dreams on hold.

Educators, students, policymakers, and others are in the midst of a welcome national conversation about the student debt crisis, and there’s plenty to say on that front. Significant cancellation of the $1.7 trillion owed by borrowers would offer vital, immediate relief to more than 45 million Americans.
But we also need to think bigger if we want to prevent public goods, like colleges and universities, from becoming private luxuries. It’s time to overhaul our existing models for financing higher education, writes Elizabeth Tandy Shermer of Loyola University Chicago in this commentary.