Our hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic would cause only a rapid “V-shaped” recession were never realistic and have now been dashed. After a brief stimulus-fueled job market recovery this summer, unemployment claims are on the rise again.
A promising initiative aims to solve a thorny problem for U.S. military service members and veterans: finding and keeping good jobs when moving to civilian life.
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel takes issue with what he calls “meritocratic hubris’ and offers a response that would leave many Americans poorly prepared to protect democracy.
One eye-popper in today’s Federal Reserve report, which may not get a lot of attention given the cacophony of daily news, is that only 30 percent of American workers who were laid off from March to July had returned to work with the same employer.
Since its launch 20 years ago, Lumina Foundation has focused on student access and success in the field of learning that takes place after high school. Today, that focus is more important than ever as society’s need for talent—and the drive to expand the proportion of Americans with quality education and training to meet this need—has grown more urgent.
Recent demonstrations against police brutality and headlines about racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths have not only elevated these particular issues, but also opened our nation’s eyes to the long history of systemic inequality in America.
Covid-19 has exposed the limits of markets and decentralization in responding to large-scale economic and social failure. As a nation, we’re finally beginning to realize that, for centuries, unfair policies, actions, beliefs, and assumptions have been specifically designed to disadvantage people of color.
For all who care about higher ed, it’s hard to imagine a worse set of health and economic challenges than what we face today. But there’s also room for optimism about how we might emerge with an education system that serves everyone better. Here are the three rays of hope – call them opportunities, maybe – that I see amid the gloom.