Mount Wachusett Community College

People are on the move at Greater Worcester Community Foundation, North Brookfield Savings Bank, Reliant Medical Group, and more.

Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner and Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester will require students, faculty, and staff to have been vaccinated against COVID-19, starting in January.

Students, faculty and staff wanting to participate in upcoming semesters must now be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 at Worcester schools the College of the Holy Cross, Clark University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Colleges in Central Massachusetts are due to receive an estimated $100 million among them under the latest federal pandemic aid program.

Enrollment at public colleges in Central Massachusetts has dropped substantially, including by more than 10% at Framingham State University and Mount Wachusett Community College, a trend echoed statewide as higher education has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic.

College leaders in Central Massachusetts are grappling with an upturned admissions period and wondering what fall enrollment will look like if students decide they don’t want to travel far for school, or even whether a fall semester would be able to take place on campus anyway.

Central Massachusetts colleges and universities face a variety of pressures in the coming year, with shifting enrollment trends to new leadership to the need to impress incoming students.

Beacon Hill leaders reiterated a single statistic several times over the course of debate on a bill requiring greater financial transparency from the higher education world: over the past five years, 18 private colleges and universities in Massachusetts have closed or merged.

Marijuana has been a part of college campuses for dozens of years, but the drug is now finding its way into the classroom, as Central Massachusetts educators are opening their doors to the cannabis industry.

Mount Wachusett Community College is adding a mathematics associate degree for the first time this fall.