Penn in the News

Olivia Mitchell of the Wharton School comments on researching retirement investments.

Leaders of the University of Missouri system announced Tuesday that they would uphold their decision to fire a communications professor whose role in campus protests brought national attention. When a video first surfaced showing her screaming at a student trying to report on protests, mass media professor Melissa Click said she didn’t think — given the extraordinary events that had paralyzed Missouri’s state flagship university campus — that her role would be a big issue.

The college campus phase of the presidential race of 2016 has kicked off as scores of state primaries fill the nation’s calendar. Already you can hear in the background the alumni anger, charges of policy violations and a rush of disgruntled donors for the doors. Candidates have visited college campuses for decades, but I don’t think we have seen anything like the vitriol, name-calling, physical shoving and fighting, and controversial candidate stances that now consume the news each day. And it’s not even the general election yet.

Angela Duckworth of the School of Arts & Sciences is quoted about children learning to “be comfortable being a bit uncomfortable.”

The chart I shared last week illustrating just how much the nation’s declining income levels have contributed to the rising cost of college for the average family prompted plenty of comments about the value of a college degree. As I expected, I also heard from several higher education experts who asked why I used the “sticker price” of college in the chart to represent tuition levels. A college’s sticker price is like the sticker on the window of a new car: It’s the advertised price, but most people pay a lower, discounted figure. Just how much lower depends on a variety of factors.

Research about school discipline policies conducted by Joan Goodman of the Graduate School of Education is cited.

To listen to many politicians, one would think talented science students are abandoning laboratories to study the humanities. In fact, it is the humanities that are losing undergraduate majors, and a new analysis from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences documents the trend.

David Hewitt of the School of Arts & Sciences is quoted about restoring parks in Philadelphia.

Collaborative research about the impact of temporary summer jobs for young people living in poor neighborhoods conducted by Penn and the University of Chicago Crime Lab is cited.

The Washington Post analyzed admission rates for men and women at about 200 prominent colleges using federal data for the 2014 cycle, the latest available. There were significant gaps favoring men at many colleges and women at others. But a large number of schools had no gender gaps or minimal gaps in admission rates. The schools were included in the review if they ranked among the top 100 in the most recent U.S. News and World Report lists of national liberal arts colleges and national universities.