It’s no secret that the coronavirus pandemic poses many dangers to American higher education.
In some ways, the dangers facing individual colleges and universities are no different than those facing the rest of our society and economy — lost revenues and increased costs, leading to program cuts and layoffs, or worse, for many institutions.
The biggest danger that higher education faces as a sector, though, is the loss of gains that we have made over the past 20 years in access to a college education — with all of the accompanying benefits to individuals and our entire society — for first-generation and minority students.
Those gains are solid, but they have not come fast enough, and they remain fragile. This pandemic is a perfect storm that could wash away hard-won progress.
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