CONAHEC News and Information

The United States economy is in free fall. Businesses have closed and people have been laid off. Unemployment could reach 30%, and if it does there are predictions that an additional 15% of the population will fall into poverty. Inequality will grow mightily with significant impact on disadvantaged groups. And this comes at a time when the US economy was already in the midst of a transition period related to work.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday released a sweeping new directive governing how schools must handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment, granting new rights to the accused and handing colleges a clear but controversial road map to navigating these highly charged investigations.

The new rule bars universities from using a single official to investigate and judge complaints, a popular model, and instead creates a judicial-like process in which the accused has the right to a live hearing and to cross-examine accusers.

Greta Huber had identified since center faculty she wished to review overseas in Germany. When she received to school and was accepted to a semester-long program in a German city with a fort, she purchased her aircraft ticket eight months upfront.

So when her college instructed her to come back house in March due to the pandemic, she didn’t deliberate. She mentioned no. “This can be a once-in-a-lifetime expertise that takes over a 12 months of planning,” she mentioned. “I couldn’t do that once more.”

Public colleges and universities face intense pressure to throw open classroom doors even as health officials warn of potential spikes in coronavirus cases come the fall.

College presidents and their boards have a seemingly impossible task: Protect school finances without putting student and faculty lives in danger. Colleges could be sued if schools reopen dorms and dining halls as a second wave of infections strikes. But financial woes in the billions loom if campuses stay shut, especially at small, historically black colleges.