Elissa Nadworny
Elissa Nadworny reports on all things college for NPR, following big stories like unprecedented enrollment declines, college affordability, the student debt crisis and workforce training. During the 2020-2021 academic year, she traveled to dozens of campuses to document what it was like to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. Her work has won several awards including a 2020 Gracie Award for a story about student parents in college, a 2018 James Beard Award for a story about the Chinese-American population in the Mississippi Delta and a 2017 Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in innovation.
Nadworny uses multiplatform storytelling – incorporating radio, print, comics, photojournalism, and video — to put students at the center of her coverage. Some favorite story adventures include crawling in the sewers below campus to test wastewater for the coronavirus, yearly deep-dives into the most popular high school plays and musicals and an epic search for the history behind her classroom skeleton.
Before joining NPR in 2014, Nadworny worked at Bloomberg News, reporting from the White House. A recipient of the McCormick National Security Journalism Scholarship, she spent four months reporting on U.S. international food aid for USA Today, traveling to Jordan to talk with Syrian refugees about food programs there.
Originally from Erie, Pa., Nadworny has a bachelor's degree in documentary film from Skidmore College and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
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The federal government has cancelled about 11 billion dollars worth of university research funding, and is threatening to cut more. When the federal government stops funding research, there's no one else to take on those costs.
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The directives include new efforts to curtail DEI programs at colleges, and discipline guidance for public schools. -
President Trump on Tuesday threatened to pull Harvard's tax-exempt status a day after cutting more than $2 billion in federal funding after the university refused to implement government demands.
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The president's comments came after the administration froze $2 billion in federal grants for Harvard after the university rejected what it saw as illegal government demands. -
The White House says it is freezing more than one billion dollars in federal funding for Cornell University and almost 800 million dollars for Northwestern University. The cuts are part of an effort by the Trump administration to use government funding to encourage colleges and universities to comply with the President's political agenda.
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University leaders are under pressure to comply with federal executive orders and policy changes or risk losing federal funding. Some college presidents say that makes their jobs more challenging. -
More than 50 universities are being investigated for alleged racial discrimination as part of Trump's campaign to end DEI programs that his officials say exclude white and Asian students.
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The White House has been clear that it intends to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, and that it will be McMahon's job to oversee that effort. -
The number of students in undergraduate and graduate programs rose above pre-pandemic levels for the first time. -
It's been more than two years since the Supreme Court overturned a federal right to abortion and gave the issue to the states. 2025 could be the year states start battling each other in court.
