The whole U.S. economy was like a giant pre-existing condition.
In a June 10 article, the Chronicle of Higher Education reflected on the first two days of discussions at JFF’s Horizons virtual experience and offered a list of six insights that could help education leaders craft strategies that would lay the foundation for an equitable recovery from the current recession.
Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession it triggered have exacerbated underlying inequities in U.S. society, Chronicle of HigherEd senior writer Goldie Blumenstyk reported that Brookings Institution senior fellow and JFF board member Richard V. Reeves kicked off the opening Horizons plenary session by observing that the health care and economic crises have had the biggest impact on low-income and marginalized populations and said we find ourselves in these circumstances because “The whole U.S. economy was like a giant pre-existing condition” before the pandemic struck.
Blumenstyk—who moderated a Horizons breakout session in which the heads of Calbright College, Southern New Hampshire University, and Western Governors University talked about solving problems at scale—said the discussions taking place at the event could begin to provide answers about whether our recovery from the current recession would be more equitable than our recovery from the recession of 2007 to 2009.
