The Key with Inside Higher Ed

The disruption and uncertainty caused by the pandemic pose challenges for all colleges and universities. But community colleges typically had tight budgets before the crisis, and serve the largest share of the nation's most vulnerable students. For insight into the questions community college leaders are wrestling with, this episode features a discussion with Steven Johnson, president of Sinclair Community College. Johnson talks about budget planning and the enrollment picture for Sinclair, which is located in Dayton, Ohio. He also describes how the college has maintained its robust prison education programs amid the pandemic, and how Sinclair is planning for when it emerges on the other side of this crisis.

Many colleges moved to pass/fail grading amid the pandemic. While that change was designed to help students, it can cause disruptions as community college students transfer to four-year institutions, or as students seek admission to graduate or medical school. The episode features Lilah Burke, a reporter at Inside Higher Ed, who has written about this issue. And to describe how college leaders can help students avoid disruptions from the "Asterisk Semester," we spoke with Anne Kress, president of Northern Virginia Community College, and Marie Lynn Miranda, incoming provost of the University of Notre Dame.

Roughly 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment since the crisis began, and the estimated unemployment rate stands at 12 to 15 percent, the highest level since the Great Depression. As Washington begins negotiating a federal jobs bill, we hear from two experts about lessons learned from the last recession, and how such a bill can help displaced workers and college students without creating more hurdles for them. The episode features Maria Flynn, president and CEO of Jobs For the Future, and Mary Alice McCarthy, director of the Center on Education and Skills with the education program at New America.

Colleges and are scrambling to distribute roughly $6.3 billion from the federal government for emergency aid aimed at students whose lives and educations have been disrupted by the pandemic. To better understand this fast-moving story, Paul Fain, the podcast's host, interviews David Baime, senior vice president for government relations and policy analysis for the American Association of Community Colleges, and Amelia Parnell, vice president for research and Policy at NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.