Daily Lumina News 112020

The pandemic has forced some professors to rethink how they teach, and it has led some students to forge closer connections with their professors—and each other.
On this podcast, students, professors, and others reflect on what they’ve learned from this disrupted and stressful semester—and how the pandemic has pushed them to grow in new ways.

Jay and Tina Rife are among the 3.6 million parents who currently have federal loans designed specifically for parents who don’t have the money to send their kids to college. Even when students take out their own loans, the Parent Plus loan program enables parents to borrow more to meet the full cost of college.
Unlike student loans, it’s difficult to get a payment plan based on a family’s income with Parent Plus. That means if a parent loses a job or suffers a significant pay cut, they may be stuck with monthly bills they cannot afford.

With COVID-19 preventing campus tours at many institutions, admissions officers are tapping into their creative side as a way to reach prospective students.
This weekend, La Roche University will play host to an Instant Decision Drive-Thru, where students will pass their high-school transcript and an application out their car window to an admissions staffer standing by. If they qualify, they'll be able to drive away with a scholarship.

Workers need more than just their educational credentials to qualify for jobs that pay well, keep those jobs, secure promotions, and boost their earnings on the job. A new report reveals the five most in-demand competencies across the labor market.

Students nationwide faced financial challenges large and small as they responded to COVID-19 this year. Job losses. Last-minute travel home. Unexpected quarantines. Grinnell College last year paid $10 million in additional financial-aid dollars, parsed out through various support programs, to help.
Now, Grinnell campus leaders are shifting those incremental efforts into a big one—removing loans from financial-aid packages and replacing them with grants. Anne F. Harris, the college’s new president, discusses why this kind of effort will make a huge difference in students’ lives.

President-elect Joe Biden recently expressed support for legislation that would forgive the first $10,000 of anyone’s student loan debt. But with Democratic control of the Senate in doubt, the odds of major legislation are uncertain. That’s why some are now pushing the incoming administration to use executive action to unilaterally forgive loans.
While the legality of such action is up for debate, a bigger question looms: What happens if we forgive student loans without changing the system that produced them in the first place?