Daily Lumina News 100422

The Year Up program is one of a relative handful of nonprofits with track records of lifting low-income Americans into jobs that can be ladders to the middle class.
They share a holistic approach to workforce development, with close relations to employers and training for in-demand work skills. They also provide or arrange help with daily life challenges. Can their model become the norm?

Divorced borrowers who have been on the hook for a former spouse's student debt are finally getting the fix they need.
But for many of these individuals, the U.S. Department of Education's radio silence makes the win bittersweet. One of their biggest concerns: whether a process will be in place to separate their loans before the Oct. 31 deadline.

Too often, the conversation around support for student parents begins and ends with a child care center on campus; if a campus can afford it, it can check the box. If not, officials point to lack of funding—a barrier we all universally understand.
But supporting student parents is so much more than child care, writes Lumina Foundation's Jasmine Haywood in this op-ed on making today's college campuses more accessible for parenting students.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, playwright, and performer. He's also an attorney. And a felon.
At 16, Betts was arrested and tried as an adult for a carjacking. He would spend nearly nine years in prison. While in solitary, he discovered poetry. He also found something else, something valuable, even enviable: a mission. Today, Betts lives his life as an argument for second chances.

Colleges that lend directly to their students cannot later refuse to release students’ transcripts as a way of forcing them to make payments, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced last week, calling the practice unlawful and abusive.
The federal ruling could have much wider implications on transcript withholding practices. Many students today can't access their transcripts because of nominal overdue fees, leaving them unable to prove to prospective employers that they have a degree.

Rafael Lopez-Librado's parents urged him to make a different life for himself than the one they lived as farm workers. College was his chance at that brighter future.
Against the odds, Lopez-Librado got himself accepted to California State University, Stanislaus. But when he arrived, a new set of challenges awaited.