Penn in the News

William Puka spoke into a megaphone, surrounded by hundreds of cheering students holding picket signs. “I just wanted to say,” he told the crowd, “that the class is going very well so far.” It wasn’t technically a class, but at the same time, it had to be. Without the protections Puka had created by calling the gathering a class, hundreds of students could face the consequences of protesting without permission.

Victor Pickard of the Annenberg School for Communication writes what about happens when commercialism overpowers democracy.

Matt Blaze of the School of Engineering and Applied Science pens an op-ed about strengthening computer security.

Roy Hamilton of the Perelman School of Medicine is interviewed about wearable brain enhancing consumer technology.

It’s not every day that Yale University gets an offer like this: Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) invited the 315-year-old Ivy League institution to move to the Sunshine State. The Connecticut legislature has a proposal to impose a tax on some investment profits from the university’s $26.5 billion endowment, and Scott seized on the opportunity to tempt the historic New Haven school to warmer climes. “We would welcome a world-renowned university like Yale to our state and I can commit that we will not raise taxes on their endowment,” Scott announced in a news release Tuesday.

Facing severe budget cuts from the state around 2010, University of California campuses started increasing their admission of out-of-state students, who pay much higher tuition rates than do California residents. UC officials never made a secret of the strategy, and some even spoke of hoping parents of high school students would start lobbying for larger state appropriations. That didn't happen.

As the costs of graduate education skyrocket and students demand cheaper, more-convenient ways of learning, colleges and universities are increasingly experimenting with so-called "stackable degrees." Think Lego blocks of college education, letting students start with a MOOC, then add a few more MOOCs to get an online certificate, then add yet more courses to get a traditional master’s degree. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced such a degree on Wednesday.

Laura Huang of the Wharton School is profiled for studying angel investors.

Christina Roberto of the Perelman School of Medicine comments on the amount of sugar in soda.

Is being a conservative professor so challenging that many of them remain politically “closeted” until they gain tenure? Yes and no, according to a new book-length study of right-leaning humanities and social science professors. The closeted part -- that’s true: about one-third of professors choose not to disclose their right-of-center economic or social views, or both, until they’ve secured a promotion to associate professor.