The COVID-19 pandemic has been uniquely hard on community colleges, with many students forced to put their education on a permanent pause. One way to bring students back is to connect them to better jobs while they are enrolled. But high-quality, paid internship programs are all too rare in this sector.

Bunker Hill Community College is changing that through its Learn and Earn program. Corporate partners provide money for the college to staff the new program, a transportation stipend for student interns, and a wage of at least $15 an hour. They also agree to provide a mentor to support the type of students Bunker Hill serves.

Toshiki Aburaki, a 2021 University of Maryland graduate, is optimistic about the future. He just landed a gig as an analyst for Deloitte after about a dozen rejections.

His optimism reflects an improving job market that notched modest gains last month. Though it’s still short of pre-pandemic levels, employers added 559,000 jobs in May—around double the jobs added in April. The prospects for recent degree-earners appear better than anticipated, especially since the pandemic has spared college graduates more than those without degrees. 

For most of high school, Dale Mcenany spent his time living in Tijuana, Mexico, and commuting across the border every day to attend school in San Diego, California. In four years, he moved a total of 11 times.

In this essay, Mcenany says the path to economic equality and equal educational outcomes must include solutions that fall outside the purview of “education policy." When it does, America’s most vulnerable students will have the same opportunities for success, he argues.