June 2019

By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, laist, June 20, 2019. For Native American college students, the road to earning a college degree can be a rocky, lonely pursuit. Only about 1,100 of the 280,000 students enrolled in the entire 10-campus University of California system in 2018 were Native Americans — that's 0.4 percent. And the overall Native American enrollment was only about 100 students more than 20 years ago; during that same span, the UC system added 100,000 students. The relatively few Native...

These aren’t typical call center employees, however. They’re among about 300 University of Utah students who have side jobs here arranged by a nonprofit called Education at Work. Founded by a call center executive, EAW sets up partnerships between universities and large employers to provide jobs like Kalapala’s. The employers get reliable employees and prospective hires while the universities can offer students a novel way to work for tuition and keep their loan debt low. The students also...

By Charlotte West, EdSource, June 10, 2019. While earning her associate’s degree at Santa Monica College and working 30 hours a week with her mother cleaning houses, Maritza Lopez didn’t always know where she was going to sleep. When her family was evicted from their apartment, she spent a lot of time hanging out on campus, often crashing on friends’ couches at night. Her search for a place to sleep reflects a challenge facing a growing number of college students caught between the pincers...