Daily Lumina News 083122

Higher ed institutions face an abiding conundrum with students who begin behind. Getting them up to speed to learn at the college level is necessary but wastes students’ time and money (remedial classes typically don’t count for credit toward a degree) and discourages them from remaining enrolled.
Now, however, this unsolved question looms large over an entire generation. How should the country and its educational institutions deal with students who lost out on years of pandemic-era learning?

Controversy has been raging over the Biden administration's student debt forgiveness plan and its impact on everything from equity to inflation.
But a long-time college president has a different take. Elaine Maimon says student debt forgiveness is a return to the idea of college as a public good—and she recommends more ways to stop debt before it starts.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program first started accepting applications 10 years ago this month. But in the summer of 2021, a series of court decisions made its future more uncertain.
DACA got a bit of a boost last week, with President Joe Biden issuing a final ruling to strengthen the program and preserve it. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas weighs in on what this means for DACA's future.

Student loan borrowers have desperately awaited President Joe Biden’s decision on debt cancellation since he took office. Last week, he delivered.
Biden's plan is not without its critics. People who never went to college, who never borrowed, or who paid off their loans have called the policy unfair. Others, sometimes in those same groups, defend it as a social good. In this interview, borrowers—current and former—offer their thoughts about the new plan.

A group of five Black students at Brigham Young University started a popular TikTok account where they ask their peers questions about race and identity. Now they’re encouraging others to do the same at campuses across the country.
Sebastian Stewart-Johnson, a junior at Brigham Young and one of the founders of the Black Menaces, says the hope is to give students of color a platform to tell their own stories.

Mental health is now one of the top reasons many college students are considering dropping out of college.
This week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy urged college administrators to hire more counselors and establish programs where students can help each other cope with mental-health struggles. He also emphasized the importance of collecting data to see which students on campus are using mental-health resources.