The In-and-Out List, 2021

Describing 2020 as a rough year for higher ed would be a huge understatement. It might even be insulting to all the people who were deep in the trenches of the enterprise of teaching and learning last year, and that includes college students, the faculty and staff members that serve them, and the administrators tasked with running the institutions. Let's not mince words and just call 2020 what it was -- a year from hell.

The pandemic upended academic calendars and semester planning. It stretched and broke budgets and led to widespread job cuts. It ruined the traditional college experience for millions of students. It made faculty members' jobs infinitely harder. There was also death amid all the dismay and continuing conflicts over free speech and racial inequity magnified by the police killing of George Floyd.

But the show went on, teaching and learning happened, and colleges and universities across the country rose to the challenge and survived. Inside Higher Ed had a front-row seat to much of it, and we chronicled news developments in real time. Today we're looking back at the unprecedented year that was while also offering our unscientific predictions for the year ahead. Happy 2021.

2020	2021
Betsy DeVos, outgoing Secretary of Education, graduate of private high school and college	Miguel Cardona, incoming Secretary of Education, graduate of public schools and public colleges
Spring Break	"Wellness Days"
On-campus parties	On-campus COVID testing and guaranteeing
Roomates	Single Occupancy Dorm Rooms
Buildings and statues on-campus with Confederate-era names	Campuses reckoning with their racial histories
Zoombombing	Zoom waiting rooms
Applying to grad school	Grad schools freeze Ph.D. admissions
International education on the defensive	International education on the offensive
Taking the SAT or ACT	Testing center closures and other pandemic related snafus
Believing tenure offers job protection	Realizing tenure doesn't protect jobs
Thinking COVID-19 affects all colleges	Thinking COVID-19 doesn't hurt wealthy colleges
Expecting community colleges to appeal to stay-at-home students	Community colleges struggling to attract students
Students wanting to return to campus	Students opting to stay home
Colleges vowing to treat athletes the same as all students	Colleges not even pretending to treat athletes the same as all students
Predictions that black colleges would be particularly hurt by COVID-19	Black college success during COVID-19
Finding new countries from which to recruit full-pay international students	Recruiting international students domestically
Harvard celebrates appeals court win on affirmative action	College fears for future of affirmative action when Supreme Court looks (again)
Hookup Culture	Zoom Dating