News & Media

Since the pandemic gained steam back in March, the drumbeat of stories about higher education’s impending demise has been nonstop. It’s true that some schools will be losers in the battle for students and resources. But don’t be surprised if overall enrollment, one of the sector’s most watched vital signs, doesn’t take a surprising turn this fall.

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.

Organizations that seek to live the values of racial justice and equity often describe their journeys as a transformation. They know they’ve arrived when the opportunity for every individual to learn, grow, and thrive in American society is no longer predicated on race or ethnicity.

The killing of George Floyd at the hands of those sworn to protect and serve has awakened many Hoosiers to the fact that the racial discrimination we had hoped was a thing of the past still infects every facet of our society. We see it in policing and criminal justice, in a disproportionately high death rate from COVID-19 among African Americans, and in unemployment rates among people of color that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

For a country locked in overlapping health, economic, and racial crises, the U.S. Supreme Court’s DACA decision couldn’t come at a better time—it affects all three.

A single Supreme Court decision doesn’t say who we are as a country—but how we react to it might. Before long, U.S. Supreme Court justices will rule on the fate of about 650,000 undocumented immigrants who are waiting anxiously. They have been protected by DACA, the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The tragic, senseless death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and the resulting cries of anguish have profoundly affected all of us at Lumina Foundation.

I had the chance this week to congratulate family members of the Lumina staff in an online graduation speech for our colleagues as they worked from home.

The uncertainty and anxiety that COVID-19 has wrought on college students and higher education institutions has generated a flurry of articles and conversations about students taking “gap years” as a way to bridge the learning challenge that the virus presents.

But the reality is that this option is a fantasy for the vast majority of students, a distraction from the enormous challenges ahead for those students and their schools.