Penn in the News

A few months after he entered the White House in 2009, President Obama gave a commencement speech at Arizona State University. It was his first as commander in chief, but that is not what made the event so memorable. Although nearly all commencement speakers at colleges and universities nationwide are awarded honorary degrees — even, for example, two deli owners in Ann Arbor, Mich., who spoke at the 2015 University of Michigan graduation and received honorary doctor of law degrees — the powers that be at ASU decided not to give one to Obama.

Rexford Ahima of the Perelman School of Medicine comments on a healthy weight and says, “BMI as a number alone may not be sufficient to predict health and risk of death.”

Robert Inman of the Wharton School shares his opinion on the proposed soda tax to help fund pre-K education in Philadelphia.

Madeline MacDonald was a freshman at Brigham Young University when she was sexually assaulted. The Seattle 19-year-old had met a man through the online dating site Tinder. He said he was Mormon, which put MacDonald at ease, and she agreed to meet him for hot chocolate. They never made it to a cafe, though. Instead, the man drove her up into the mountains and molested her. Campus officials opened a sexual assault investigation.

Universities in England will be able to increase tuition fees above £9,000 from autumn 2017, if they have high-quality teaching, in plans announced by Universities Minister Jo Johnson. The proposals will also make it easier for new universities to open. The plans aim to encourage more competition and better consumer value for students.

For years, as applicants weighed whether their scores on the ACT or SAT were better (and which would make them more attractive to colleges), they used a “concordance table” that ACT and the College Board produced to show how to make such comparisons. So naturally many have been waiting to see how the table would change now that the College Board is using a new version of the SAT. The College Board this month released a new version of the table. But while there is a table, there is no concordance between the College Board and the ACT.

The effects of growing income inequality continue to ripple through the American economy as every sector from retailers to automakers try to figure out how to appeal to an increasingly bifurcated consumer base — the rich, the poor, and a shrinking middle class. In the retail and restaurant worlds, the strategy among the likes of Walmart and McDonald’s has long been to gain market share with seemingly endless discounts. But that approach is showing signs of aging as consumer preferences shift and lower prices weigh on the bottom line.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is featured as the commencement speaker for the Class of 2016.

Mindy Yang Licurse of the Perelman School of Medicine is quoted about co-authoring a study about the cost difference of x-rays when taken at private imaging centers or hospitals.

Freshman Sean P. acknowledges the objections to having Bill Clinton speak at his school’s commencement ceremony this year – the former president's record on abortion and same-sex marriage hardly make him a role model for graduates of a Roman Catholic institution, critics have said. But to Sean, Mr. Clinton’s politics and policies have little to do with his presence at Loyola Marymount University on graduation day. “The president [came] here to speak,” not promote an agenda, says Sean, an international relations major who asked that his last name not be used.