Daily Lumina News 092122

Many American colleges are gearing up for a spike of interest in prison education programs. That's because incarcerated men and women will soon be eligible for Pell Grants. It will be the first time in 28 years that prisoners—regardless of the conviction type or sentence length—can access this federal funding for higher education.
This episode of Rethinking College reports on Pitzer College's “Inside-Out Pathway-to-BA,” a pioneering program that brings college students and professors into prisons to learn alongside incarcerated students.

Hundreds of colleges applied for The Million Dollar Community College Challenge, a national grant competition intended to help community colleges improve their marketing and build stronger brands. Last month, Madera Community College emerged as the grand prize winner.
On this podcast, the president of Madera talks about the vision for making a transformational change in the college and in the community. Leaders from Lumina Foundation also join the conversation to discuss Lumina’s decision-making process.

The Biden administration’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans for qualifying borrowers has created an uproar and an array of reactions: It’s too much; it’s too little; it won’t do enough to help the neediest borrowers.
Yet there’s a less-heard-from community that stands to benefit: students who provide care for loved ones with a chronic disease or illness. For them, life is about to get a little easier as they navigate student debt and caregiving responsibilities.

As the school year begins, low-income college students are struggling to balance success in the classroom with meeting basic needs—including stable access to adequate amounts of food.
California’s community colleges are working to reduce some of these hurdles through basic needs centers that help students easily access food pantries, housing assistance, and safety net programs like CalFresh.

When Forrest Beesley first learned about an Oregon City clinic that would help him remove old charges from his criminal record for free, he thought it was a prank.
Expungement services are in high demand this year after Oregon stopped charging a $281 filing fee per case, advocates say. And institutions like Portland Community College are stepping up to help fill that need.

Despite widespread frustration caused by the sudden shift to online learning in the spring of 2020, a new study shows that most students’ sense of trust in higher education was largely unaffected by the COVID-19 disruptions—at least in the early months of the pandemic.
But the findings differ for Black and first-generation college students, whose trust in their institutions declined during this time.