Penn in the News

Albert Einstein often gets credit for words he never spoke, including these: "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." In 1963, the line appeared in the sociologist William Bruce Cameron’s text Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking. Two contemporary sociologists have now brought Cameron’s intuitive wisdom to life.

Giang Nguyen of Student Health says, “One of the good things historically about pelvic exams is that they made women good health-care consumers.”

Jason Karlawish of the Perelman School of Medicine writes about Alzheimer’s disease patients as the last casualty of the Cold War.

During the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton proposed the idea of debt-free college to counter a popular refrain from Bernie Sanders that public colleges become tuition-free. Since she claimed the nomination, Clinton has been moving closer to some of Sanders’ proposals from their primary fight in an effort to reach his voters. One of those ideas includes free college, with some tweaks on the Sanders plan (namely, an income cutoff of $125,000).

Chinese primary and secondary schools are often derided as grueling, test-driven institutions that churn out students who can recite basic facts but have little capacity for deep reasoning. A new study, though, suggests that China is producing students with some of the strongest critical thinking skills in the world. The unexpected finding could recast the debate over whether Chinese schools are doing a better job than American ones, complementing previous studies showing Chinese students outperforming their global peers in reading, math and science.

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.

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.