Calbright College, California’s online community college, may have survived elimination in the state’s budget, but the pressure is on to prove its value to the state.

The college faces a state audit and has yet to announce any employer partnerships it promised a year ago. Questions also remain whether Calbright’s students, the first of whom are 10 months into the program, will complete and find the employment the college promised. These are the issues awaiting newly appointed Calbright President Ajita Talwalker Menon.

As the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis continue to converge, the future of higher education is shrouded in fear and uncertainty. While trying to manage anxieties about the potentially devastating risks to public and personal health that campus-re-opening plans pose, faculty and staff workers worry about whether or not their jobs, programs, or even their institutions will survive—and, if they do, what they will look like.

Four professors discuss the situations at their institutions and how their respective struggles are connected.