News & Views posts.
College students have a powerful friend they may not know about when it comes to protecting their rights in a time of disruption for higher education: their state’s attorney general. Often dubbed “The People’s Lawyer,” the AG is the top legal officer in a state, representing the public interest— including the rights of students—in a variety of ways.
Attacks on Asian-Americans have surged in the past year, one incident after another, until a man with a gun opened fire in an eight-victim shooting spree that only ended when police rammed the suspect’s car off the highway. Most of the victims were mothers, sisters, wives – but above all, fatally, Asian, seemingly the only qualification necessary to put them and other Americans in the crosshairs of today’s haters. I’m Asian, too, as is my husband, and like so many others we feel the smothering weight of this national sickness triggered by the perverse view that the haters have of others. Not people. Not fellow-Americans. But faceless others.
There was a time when corporate executives looked at artificial intelligence and other technology and saw them largely, if not solely, as a way to reduce costs. But as AI and algorithms become integral parts of everyday work, smart executives are seeing that the best course of action is a sort of merger of human and machine.
People are struggling right now to find jobs, pay bills, and care for family. Located within those struggles is the need to upskill or reskill to be equipped for available jobs and better opportunities. Community-based organizations (CBOs) provide a critical means of support. They create new pathways to education and employment and help fill gaps for career guidance and navigation for institutions with limited capacity. They are helping meet adult learners’ needs, especially now when they are most urgent.
Crises have a way of revealing who we really are, and that’s as true for nations as it is for people. If we don’t fix critical education, job training, and racial equity challenges during this pandemic recovery, we’ll miss an historic opportunity.
Many people have long viewed education and training that don’t count for college credit as moneymaking services that colleges and universities provide outside of their ivory walls.
When designed and implemented with equitable outcomes in mind, more engaged and active teaching and learning approaches—known as “high-impact practices” (HIPs) —can benefit college students across the board, especially students of color and adults, a Lumina-supported project shows.
Anyone who pays attention to higher education policy should know by now the outsized debt burdens shouldered by Black, Hispanic or Latino, and Native American students. And yet we haven’t yet moved from admiring the problem to implementing solutions, in part because the space has been dominated by white policy experts (who are, frankly, like me).
With the brutal killing of George Floyd and last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, more state legislatures are debating measures that intersect with how we think about race in society.
Communities struggling amid the pandemic are looking for ways to revive their local economies. While there’s no easy answer, Lumina Foundation has published an easy-to-grasp guide to developing the knowledge and skills of urban and rural residents with lessons drawn from the success of Talent Hubs across the country.