Lumina Foundation is working to increase the share of adults in the U.S. labor force with college degrees or other credentials of value leading to economic prosperity.
Macalester College, in Minnesota, wants its international students to feel at home on campus over the summer. The liberal arts institution raised nearly $400,000 to provide housing, meals, and stipends for students who were apprehensive about leaving the United States over the academic break because of shifting visa rules under the Trump administration.
A blitz of federal policy changes—most recently, the announcement of mandatory social media screening for all student visa holders—has left foreign students across the country fearful that they might not be able to return to the United States for the fall semester.
When people hear that Don C. Sawyer III teaches sociology in a maximum-security prison, they often ask if he's afraid. He says many people carry assumptions about incarcerated individuals and what they are capable of. They don’t watch these men breaking down theories, challenging one another, and demonstrating intellectual brilliance. Moments like these remain confined to a single prison classroom. But they are real. And they matter.
In this essay, Sawyer reflects on the power and potential of college-in-prison programs and the success stories that the wider world doesn’t get to see.
Teona Hall, 39, is a social work student at the Community College of Allegheny County. After graduating, she plans to transfer to Carlow University to obtain a bachelor’s degree. The mother of four receives $745 in funds through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to buy food. Those benefits are now in jeopardy following historic cuts in federal funding.
Nearly two million people in Pennsylvania use SNAP, a portion of whom are college students like Hall. Keeping benefits could determine whether they make it to graduation, leaving local universities and partner organizations to figure out new ways to support them.
Around California this summer, low-income and first-generation students are staying in college dorms for the first time. High schoolers are camping beside the Klamath River. Undergraduates are presenting research at a symposium for budding scholars in Long Beach.
All of these efforts are part of federally funded TRIO programs—like Upward Bound and McNair Scholars—based on California campuses, from rural Columbia College neighboring Yosemite National Park to private four-year institutions in Los Angeles. Now, however, a proposal from the Trump administration to eliminate TRIO programs looms over their future.
The Trump administration’s battle with Harvard University will be aired in court today, when a federal judge hears arguments in the school’s lawsuit challenging the government’s attack on its federal research funding.
There is much at stake, including more than $2 billion, nearly a thousand grants funding ambitious scientific research, and the overarching question of how much control the federal government can exert over a private university.
North Carolina needs more nurses. A decade from now, the state is projected to have a 22 percent shortage of registered nurses—the most severe in any state. Nursing shortages lead to medical mistakes, nursing burnout, and delays in needed care.
The question for workforce leaders, hospital officials, educators, and others is how to train more nurses in the communities that need them. Enter nursing apprenticeships.
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