Workers need more than just their educational credentials to qualify for jobs that pay well, keep those jobs, secure promotions, and boost their earnings on the job. A new report reveals the five most in-demand competencies across the labor market.

Students nationwide faced financial challenges large and small as they responded to COVID-19 this year. Job losses. Last-minute travel home. Unexpected quarantines. Grinnell College last year paid $10 million in additional financial-aid dollars, parsed out through various support programs, to help.

Now, Grinnell campus leaders are shifting those incremental efforts into a big one—removing loans from financial-aid packages and replacing them with grants. Anne F. Harris, the college’s new president, discusses why this kind of effort will make a huge difference in students’ lives.

President-elect Joe Biden recently expressed support for legislation that would forgive the first $10,000 of anyone’s student loan debt. But with Democratic control of the Senate in doubt, the odds of major legislation are uncertain. That’s why some are now pushing the incoming administration to use executive action to unilaterally forgive loans.

While the legality of such action is up for debate, a bigger question looms: What happens if we forgive student loans without changing the system that produced them in the first place?