On this episode of The Key, Michael Itzkowitz of Third Way discusses recent research on a new way of judging the performance of colleges and universities based on how quickly their students recoup what they spent out of pocket for a degree or certificate.

Rutgers University’s Michelle Van Noy joins the conversation with her thoughts on the overall landscape of holding colleges accountable for their students’ workplace success.

College health officials scrambled this week to comply with a federal recommendation to pause the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine after rare blood-clotting cases emerged in six recipients.

Some college leaders are now concerned about the psychological effect on students who were already vaccine hesitant. “From a practical sense, it’s maybe a nothing,” says Michael Lauzardo, who is in charge of the University of Florida’s mass-vaccination effort. “From a psychological sense, vaccine hesitancy is a fragile thing."

Photo: Hannah Yoon

Dr. Alisa Stephens is a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, and the technical and detail-oriented nature of her work requires long uninterrupted stretches of thought. Like many women during the pandemic, Stephens found working from home to be a series of wearying challenges.

Even before COVID-19, many female scientists felt unsupported in their fields. Now, some are hitting a breaking point.