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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Colleges are leaning heavily on campus custodians. "You may not have seen us before the pandemic, but I guarantee you'll see us now," says Tanya Hughes, a campus building services head in Florida. -
A majority of U.S. colleges have canceled spring break, in an attempt to curb student travel. But the rise of online classes means students can now attend college from anywhere, including beachside. -
We've talked with hundreds of people since the pandemic shut down schools and colleges a year ago. We checked back back in with three of them about how their lives have changed. -
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. -
The Biden administration is trying to figure out how much student debt to forgive and how to go about doing it — through executive action or legislation. -
For many families, this is one of the biggest financial decisions they'll ever make. A new book helps navigate the often confusing and opaque financial aid system. -
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 new measures would increase testing and access to personal protective equipment for schools, and create a centralized, national database of school coronavirus cases. -
Following an official action from President Biden Wednesday, the Education Department extended pandemic relief from payments for about 41 million federal student loan borrowers through Sept. 30. -
The flags represent people from all 50 states, the five U.S. territories and Washington, D.C., who cannot attend because of the coronavirus pandemic and tight security in the nation's capital.
