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 鈥� incorporating radio, print, comics, photojournalism, and video 鈥� 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 president said he doesn't want to forgive the loans of people who went to "Harvard and Yale and Penn." The real picture of student debt in the U.S. is much more complicated. -
Many colleges are starting their spring semester this week, and new data show that schools are bringing students back to campus, with more in-person classes. -
The FAFSA uses tax data from two years ago to determine a student's eligibility for financial aid for college. But if your financial situation has changed since then, there are ways to get more money. -
Researchers say the pandemic is largely to blame for this year's drastic enrollment declines, but college-going has also been on a decade-long downward trend. -
As Thanksgiving break approaches, many schools are seeing spikes in coronavirus cases. Some campuses are using students to work the phones as contact tracers. -
Young adults are preparing to travel home for Thanksgiving, but the coronavirus is making things complicated. Epidemiologists say there are things families can to do reduce the risk of infection. -
Data from more than 1,400 colleges, obtained by NPR, show that most colleges with in-person classes have no clear testing plan or are testing only students who believe they have the coronavirus.
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More colleges are rolling back their optimistic proclamations of an in-person or hybrid fall. Plans are now more likely to include hefty virtual options, be mostly remote or even entirely online. -
A group of students from Brooklyn see every day how climate change disproportionately affects their community. They made a podcast that asked: Why? -
Colleges might be able to reopen their campuses if they're able to frequently test their students. But can they get tests --- and with budgets already squeezed, will they be able to afford it?
