Welcome to the Meratas Memo’s Weekly Roundup! This is your weekly fix of higher education and alternative financing news. Here are this week’s stories:
Virtual Office Hours Help More Students
With so many members of a university dedicated to helping students (teachers, advisors, and career counselors), it’s a shame that many don’t take advantage of meetings with them. However, that has changed with the advent of remote office hours.
Due to the pandemic, more and more of these faculty members are using remote or virtual office hours to meet with their students and, as a result, more students are taking advantage of meeting with them. Getting students the help they need, especially now, is of the utmost importance. So will this new form of meeting last past the pandemic?
Read the full story on Edsurge here.
The Case For a Workforce ISA
In this post by Edsurge, they tell the story of Abraham Cachu, a man who arrived from Mexico to the states at 18. He jumped around through a couple endeavors including being a self-taught programmer, social media manager, and running various e-commerce sites. However, these weren’t enough to land him a full time job and, as a result, he ended up working at an Amazon warehouse. He needed something more to push him over the top and into a career.
He then learned of UC San Diego’s Certificate in Business Development program. Not only would he earn his certificate in Business Development through the program, he would also get job-prep and career services through a non-profit that worked with the program. All of this tied together by UC San Diego’s Income Share Agreement program. Could this be the future of filling skill gaps in the workforce? This posts explores that question as well as the potential pitfalls with the program.
Read the full story on Edsurge here.
Pandemic Causes Historically Low Rises in College Tuition
In an effort to both attract and retain students, many colleges and universities amid the pandemic are freezing or lowering their tuition and fees for the 2020-2021 academic year. While the average price for tuition still rose across many two and four year institutions, these increases were historically low.
What is the cause in the overall rise in tuition? And will these increases stay at historical low points?
