Daily Lumina News 082823

The study group starts early in the morning, when a typical undergrad might still be snoozing, but none of the participants are late, and no one appears tired or hungover. The students—veterans and active-duty service members attending a weeklong humanities “boot camp” at Amherst College—are accustomed to early wake-up calls.
The camp at Amherst is one of a couple dozen held by highly competitive colleges this summer, part of a decade-old effort to raise the academic aspirations of enlisted veterans and service members and ready them for what can be a difficult transition to the classroom.

For years, incarcerated people in California’s state prisons have been able to earn associate degrees. But a movement to award bachelor’s degrees is rapidly expanding.
Inside the first women’s program at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, incarcerated women are doing just that: rebuilding their lives through higher education. Two professors, along with both incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students explain the power of education behind bars in this podcast.

For most high school students, applying to college is an anxiety-filled game of wait-and-see that starts after they send off applications and may well end in rejection. But it’s also a game of resources, one that rich, well-connected families are primed to win. Parents with lower incomes don’t have the means for SAT tutors, application coaches, and visits to multiple schools in far-flung states.
That may be changing, courtesy of an emerging national trend known as “direct admission”—a low-cost alternative that could revolutionize the way students of lesser means apply to college.

College applications have long stood as the entry point to higher education. But that gateway can slam shut for students unfamiliar with the process and forced to navigate it without support.
A new working paper from Brown University’s Annenberg Institute aims to help colleges and policymakers develop strategies to engage and help those at risk of falling through the cracks.

An estimated 20 percent of community college students are actually high schoolers who are getting both high school and college credit for courses. Research shows that students who take dual-enrollment classes in high school are more likely to enroll in college and to graduate than their peers of similar backgrounds.
But this scenario excludes thousands of undocumented students. They can face a mountain of barriers, including cost-prohibitive dual-enrollment prices because of the state in which they live.

It’s one thing to invite students to talk about race in an admissions essay. But how do people coach them to present their best selves?
That's a question facing educators now that the U.S. Supreme Court has declared affirmative action unconstitutional. Meanwhile, people like Tyler Harper worry that Black and Latino students will experience the pitfalls of racial gamification in essay writing.