CONAHEC News and Information

Thursday, May. 07, 2020

The United States economy is in free fall. Businesses have closed and people have been laid off. Unemployment could reach 30%, and if it does there are predictions that an additional 15% of the population will fall into poverty. Inequality will grow mightily with significant impact on disadvantaged groups. And this comes at a time when the US economy was already in the midst of a transition period related to work.

Thursday, May. 07, 2020

Ahead of the traditional May 1 deadline to decide where she would go to college, Tiffany Tang had four schools to choose from. Then on Tuesday, the University of California, Los Angeles emailed to offer her a spot off the wait list. That evening, she received a call from a Houston area code — an admissions officer from Rice. On Wednesday, Cornell got in touch.

Thursday, May. 07, 2020

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday released a sweeping new directive governing how schools must handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment, granting new rights to the accused and handing colleges a clear but controversial road map to navigating these highly charged investigations.

The new rule bars universities from using a single official to investigate and judge complaints, a popular model, and instead creates a judicial-like process in which the accused has the right to a live hearing and to cross-examine accusers.

Tuesday, May. 05, 2020

What will happen on college campuses in the fall? It's a big question for families, students and the schools themselves.

A lot of what happens depends on factors outside the control of individual schools: Will there be more testing? Contact tracing? Enough physical space for distancing? Will the coronavirus have a second wave? Will any given state allow campuses to reopen?

For all of these questions, it's really too early to know the answers. But one thing is clear: Life, and learning for the nation's 20 million students in higher education, will be different.

Tuesday, May. 05, 2020

Greta Huber had identified since center faculty she wished to review overseas in Germany. When she received to school and was accepted to a semester-long program in a German city with a fort, she purchased her aircraft ticket eight months upfront.

So when her college instructed her to come back house in March due to the pandemic, she didn’t deliberate. She mentioned no. “This can be a once-in-a-lifetime expertise that takes over a 12 months of planning,” she mentioned. “I couldn’t do that once more.”

Tuesday, May. 05, 2020

They wanted the campus experience, but their colleges sent them home to learn online during the coronavirus pandemic. Now, students at more than 25 U.S. universities are filing lawsuits against their schools demanding partial refunds on tuition and campus fees, saying they’re not getting the caliber of education they were promised.

Tuesday, May. 05, 2020

Public colleges and universities face intense pressure to throw open classroom doors even as health officials warn of potential spikes in coronavirus cases come the fall.

College presidents and their boards have a seemingly impossible task: Protect school finances without putting student and faculty lives in danger. Colleges could be sued if schools reopen dorms and dining halls as a second wave of infections strikes. But financial woes in the billions loom if campuses stay shut, especially at small, historically black colleges.

Friday, May. 01, 2020

MacMurray College survived the Civil War, the Great Depression and two world wars, but not the coronavirus pandemic. The private liberal-arts school in central Illinois announced recently it will shut its doors for good in May, after 174 years.

Tuesday, Apr. 28, 2020

For U.S. colleges and universities, COVID-19 may well pose far greater, and in some cases far different, challenges than the Great Recession.

Tuesday, Apr. 28, 2020

Across the country, college campuses have become ghost towns. Students and professors are hunkered down inside, teaching and learning online. University administrators are tabulating the financial costs of the Covid-19 pandemic, which already exceed the CARES Act’s support for higher education.

The toll of this pandemic is high and will continue to rise. But another crisis looms for students, higher education and the economy if colleges and universities cannot reopen their campuses in the fall.

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