Wraparound supports and services such as mentoring, coaching, and career advising can go a long way toward increasing community college students' odds of success.

In this interview, Paige Ponder of Chicago-based One Million Degrees discusses the life-changing benefits of holistic support for some college students—plus how models like One Million Degrees might be replicated around the country. 

Community colleges are trying a host of strategies—cash incentives, marketing campaigns, ice cream socials, free books, re-enrollment drives—to attract students this fall after steep enrollment declines during the pandemic.

Some administrators expressed hope earlier this summer that their institutions would begin recovering this fall from pandemic enrollment losses, but that rosy outlook took a hit with the spread of the Delta variant.

Making good on the promise of equitable education for all goes far beyond addressing the rising price of tuition and the Pell Grant’s failure to keep pace, writes Maria Flynn of Jobs for the Future in this op-ed. Affordability, it turns out, is just one side of the Rubik’s Cube.

Building a more equitable future hinges on expanding access not only to colleges and universities but also to the many lower-cost training programs that are now creating on-ramps to good jobs, she says.