Illustration: Nicolas Ogonosky

Across higher ed, there’s a growing recognition of the connection between students’ well-being and their success in the classroom. 

Some colleges and faculty members are creating or considering new policies to support students when they need a day to tend to their mental health. But providing the academic accommodations that many students are calling for requires instructors to shoulder new responsibilities and change old habits and standards.

Many prisoners struggle to learn, with prison often magnifying their problems and making stressful, difficult situations worse. Higher education is a way to directly challenge institutionalization, giving incarcerated individuals the tools to defeat criminality.

Lyle C. May, a prison journalist in North Carolina, describes in this essay how gaining access to education on death row gave him the tools to fight back against policies restricting educational access.

The skills gap, that chasm between the needs of the labor market and the capabilities of the available workforce, is one of the most pressing threats to Michigan’s economy.

But while Michigan is spending millions to close the gap by expanding access to college credentials and good jobs, some education watchers say those strategies will fall short without a crucial, under-the-radar reform effort: transforming the delivery of developmental education.