Trapped between the financial hardships of the pandemic and the technological hurdles of online learning, millions of low-income college students across the United States face mounting obstacles in their quests for higher education. Some have simply dropped out, while others are left scrambling to find housing and internet access amid campus closures and job losses.

“Every part of this pandemic is hitting low-income students hardest, and they were already in bad shape to begin with,” says Sara Goldrick-Rab of the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice at Temple University.

A one-size-fits-all path that goes from high school to a four-year college degree to a lifelong career in one field simply isn’t the reality for most American workers anymore. 

In the wake of the pandemic, there is a clear need to reconfigure the education-to-work pipeline so that it aligns more effectively with today’s dynamic economy. What would such a program look like? And how can federal and state governments augment existing efforts with other policy changes to help create a better, more resilient future of work?