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A Vending Machine for Health Supplies
Inside Higher Ed
Ashley Mowreader
April 15, 2025
Machines selling drugstore items such as bandages and tampons give community college students greater access to affordable health products.
According to a May 2024 Student Voice survey, roughly one in five community college students (19 percent) believe their institution should invest in wellness facilities or services to promote well-being. A recent pilot program across the state of California seeks to remove barriers to accessing health supplies for community college students.
The Wellness Vending Machine Pilot Program, a state-funded program established by Assembly Bill 2482, which passed in 2022, aims to make preventative care products more accessible to college students. The program provides funding for 18 colleges to address students’ physical health and overall academic success in a unique, lower-cost way: through vending machines that dispense everything from Band-Aids to birth control.
For some institutions, like College of the Redwoods, the vending machine is the primary source of personal care products on campus.
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As ‘Bot’ Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond
Voice of San Diego
Jakob McWhinney
April 14, 2025
Community colleges have been dealing with an unprecedented phenomenon: fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds. While it has caused chaos at many colleges, some Southwestern faculty feel their leaders haven’t done enough to curb the crisis.
When the spring semester began, Southwestern College professor Elizabeth Smith felt good. Two of her online classes were completely full, boasting 32 students each. Even the classes’ waitlists, which fit 20 students, were maxed out. That had never happened before.
“Teachers get excited when there’s a lot of interest in their class. I felt like, ‘Great, I’m going to have a whole bunch of students who are invested and learning,’’ Smith said. “But it quickly became clear that was not the case.”
By the end of the first two weeks of the semester, Smith had whittled down the 104 students enrolled in her classes, including those on the waitlist, to just 15. The rest, she’d concluded, were fake students, often referred to as bots.
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