Penn in the News

Sheila C. Bair is familiar with the hardships that debt can bring. For five years, including during the subprime-mortgage crisis, she served as chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. A year ago she became president of Washington College, a 234-year-old private nonprofit institution in Maryland, and she has turned more of her attention to student-loan debt. How can students, especially those from poorer families, get a good liberal-arts education and not pay too high a price for it? She shares her strategies here.

Michael Horowitz of the School of Arts & Sciences writes about the connection between artificial intelligence and the military.

The most significant challenge facing higher education today is our growing economic segregation. College completion rates for those at the lowest socioeconomic rungs continue to lag far behind those of their wealthier peers, not only due to diminished financial resources but also because of a lack of social and cultural capital. Redressing this phenomenon will require offering an education that prepares each and every student for success in work and life, while inspiring them to take seriously their social responsibilities in a society plagued by persistent inequities.

A study about the impacts of Kickstarter funding by Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School is cited.

Neal Rubenstein of the Perelman School of Medicine says, “What we’re really trying to do is teach them what’s under the skin.”

In one of his first messages to the campus after taking over as interim president of Baylor University, a campus whose record on sexual assault made it the object of national outrage, David E. Garland began with three simple words: "Dear Baylor Family." Family. On its face, the metaphor is an odd one. Families aren’t made up of tens of thousands of people — a large percentage of whom leave the family every year — linked to each other by little more than a common location.

A crackdown on Turkey’s higher education sector is hurting international academic collaborations and student and scholar exchanges. A joint statement signed by 42 American and European scholarly groups describes what’s happening in Turkey as a “massive and virtually unprecedented assault” on principles of academic freedom and freedom of expression and says “the crackdown on the education sector creates the appearance of a purge of those deemed inadequately loyal to the current government.”

Edward Cantu and Abraham Shaked of the Perelman School of Medicine are interviewed about organ perfusion.

Picture two locomotives barreling down a single track, heading for a collision as predictable as it is unstoppable. Such is the path of Janet A. Napolitano and Linda P.B. Katehi, the president of the University of California and the chancellor of its Davis campus, respectively. By August 1 the university is expected to receive the findings of a months-long investigation into whether Ms.

How is the ongoing reform program in Myanmar impacting higher education? During a recent briefing in London, Kevin MacKenzie, British Council country director in Myanmar from August 2012 until this month, provided some answers.