Daily Lumina News 082020

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of college students are making their way to campus to begin the fall semester. At the University of Georgia in Athens about 8,000 students are moving into the dorms this week, beginning an unusual on-campus experience, with a global pandemic as the backdrop.
Nationwide, about 20 percent of four-year schools are offering classes either partially or fully in person, with another 15 percent doing a hybrid approach. Those numbers are continuing to change, however, as more institutions reverse course.

Guided pathways are a way for colleges to guide students through their credential or degree, while giving them the room to still make their own decisions.
In this Q&A, Ann Buchele of Linn-Benton Community College discusses the importance of guided pathways, the challenges to creating these program maps, and how pathways can apply to a vast demographic of learners.

The coronavirus crisis has hurt colleges everywhere. But for schools like Ohio University—non-flagship public campuses in Ohio and across the Midwest that were already struggling—it has hastened a reckoning. The campuses have become heavily reliant on dollars from higher and higher tuitions just as the Midwest faces a demographic dive and continued cuts in state funding.
At the same time, more students need college to get jobs, but it is harder for them to afford.

How will institutions pay for a hybrid model of remote and on-campus engagement? How will they manage and maintain quality student experiences and support faculty and other staff?
Those answers and more can be found in The Chronicle's newly released 2020-21 Almanac of Higher Education.