Jesse O’Connell

It is too soon to draw full and conclusive lessons from the 2020 election, but two things are beyond dispute: Joe Biden has been elected the next President of the United States, and America remains deeply polarized.

American higher education is in the eye of a hurricane. When the pandemic hit last spring, campuses were buffeted by the frantic transition to remote instruction, lost revenue, and emergency spending on health and safety measures. The country made it through the tough early months with unprecedented cooperation between higher education leaders, faculty members, and students—all determined to chart a course through the storm. As limited relief arrived from the federal government, colleges and universities settled unsteadily into a new reality.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal agency created in 1935 to address the nation’s then-worst economic catastrophe, is getting a fresh look as we think about how to help millions of Americans left jobless in the pandemic. There’s a good reason for why. During its eight-year tenure, the WPA put more than eight million Americans to work on more than a million projects of public interest. These federal workers built roads and dams and electrified rural communities long-denied that necessity of modern life. Others were put to work creating public spaces, public art, and swelling the ranks of crucial service-sector jobs.

Like most crises, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a whipsaw effect. On one hand, it’s wildly disruptive and distracting, reordering our routines and upending every aspect of normal life. But sudden upheaval also brings the opportunity to challenge long-held assumptions about the status quo. It resets our priorities, strips away the non-essentials and forces us to focus—often on what’s right in front of us.

Think of a presidential primary campaign like a boisterous family discussion around the holiday dinner table. Everyone has his or her own ideas, many disagree, and the arguments are loud, lively, and passionate.

The federal government’s long-awaited final new regulations for accrediting postsecondary institutions are out—and the results are mixed. We see some encouraging steps forward, but also some troubling oversights. In short, there is still plenty of work to do.