For more than 11 years, colleges have fought off attempts to hold them accountable for the most basic measure of student success: whether what graduates learn will provide them with the gainful employment they need to make it worth the price.

But now, in the age of data, information has quietly become available to students, families, and consumer advocates that allows them to make those calculations themselves.

COVID-19 has underscored a critical fact in higher education: The traditional college experience no longer meets the needs of most students. 

In this op-ed, Lumina Foundation's Danette Howard says we should seize this opportunity to permanently restructure the college learning experience into one that meets the complex needs of today's students and prepares them for an increasingly remote workforce.

Photo: Scott Olson

Factory workers, nurses, and school bus drivers are among the tens of thousands of Americans who walked off jobs in October amid a surge of labor activism that economists and labor leaders have dubbed “Striketober.”

The strike drives, experts say, stem from the new leverage workers hold in the nation’s tight job market: Having seen the massive profits their companies collected during the coronavirus pandemic, they want their contributions acknowledged in the form of better pay and working conditions.