Photo: LA Johnson

Commencement speakers offer graduates a range of sage advice from different perspectives. This graduation season, Dr. Anthony Fauci talked about lessons from the pandemic. Ruby Bridges has shared her wisdom from the civil rights movement. 

At Pitzer College's graduation, Yusef Pierce spoke about forgiveness, perseverance, and seizing future potential. For Pierce, who is the first person to graduate with a bachelor's degree from the Inside-Out program at Pitzer College, the remarks represented his personal success story after a decade in prison.

On this episode of The Key, Beth Akers of the American Enterprise Institute and Claude Pressnell Jr. of the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association offer contrasting views about the wisdom of using economic outcomes as the primary determinant of whether a college, university, or academic program has "value."

Photo: Steven Senne/AP

When Samantha Maltais steps onto Harvard's campus this fall, she’ll become the first member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe to attend its prestigious law school. It’s a “full-circle moment” for the university and the Martha’s Vineyard tribe, she says.

The call for colleges to prioritize the needs of students like Maltais comes at a critical time. During the pandemic, Native American students experienced the sharpest college enrollment decline of any racial or ethnic group, as economic hardships, health disparities, and the challenges of remote learning in isolated tribal communities forced many students to quit school.