Penn in the News

Christopher Feaster lived in a homeless shelter in D.C. for most of high school. Laundry was a once-a-month luxury. “I would have to re-wear socks,” he says. “They were white socks, but they were so dirty that they were brown and sometimes they were starting to go black. I had to re-wear underwear because I didn’t have clean underwear.” Homeless students face terrible odds of graduating high school, but Christopher excelled at school.

Zhao Yang, 18, a high school student in Beijing, looked upset as she emerged from a room equipped with a video camera. “I was too nervous, so I spoke too fast,” she told her parents. “The questions were too weird. I wasn’t prepared for most of them.” Ms. Zhao is a top student with ambitions to go to a top American university. She has been preparing for years, working with a private admissions agent and taking the SAT and the Test of English as a Foreign Language several times. Her parents have invested more than $30,000 in the project, hoping to give their only child a boost.

Only 14 percent of the students who start out in a community college transfer to a four-year university and earn a bachelor’s degree within six years, according to a report released on Tuesday by three groups that are studying ways to plug the leaky pipeline between two- and four-year colleges. The report was a joint effort of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program, and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The research breaks down how students fare in different states.

Ezekiel Emanuel of the Wharton School and the Perelman School of Medicine and Justin Bekelman, also of Medicine, co-author an op-ed about the cost of end-of-life care in America compared to Europe and Canada.

When colleges discuss general education reforms or announce curricular revamps, it's common to hear professors talk of the need to replace "cafeteria-style" approaches. Distribution requirements, critics say, may assure that all students take a course or two in such broad fields as the humanities, the social sciences and the physical and biological sciences. But the requirements don't necessarily encourage thoughtful integration of different fields of study -- and many students simply look for the easiest options to check the requirements off.

Adrian Raine of the School of Arts & Sciences and the Perelman School of Medicine comments on the push to legalize marijuana and research studying pot’s impact on verbal ability.

Meggan Hain of the School of Veterinary Medicine is quoted about the impact of fluctuating winter temperatures on animals.

Ken Lum of the School of Design is featured for his experience living in America, specifically Philadelphia, compared to Canada.

President Amy Gutmann is quoted about the announcement of the commencement speaker, Lin-Manuel Miranda.