Penn in the News

Lawmakers in the state of Washington want to give college dropouts a chance to finish their degree for free, a novel proposal that could have far-reaching implications for boosting national completion rates. Washington’s Free to Finish College bill, which is wending its way through the legislature with bipartisan support, calls for the state to cover tuition for residents who are 15 credits short of an associates or bachelor’s degree.

Pay for graduate teaching assistants in the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University is among the lowest in the Big Ten -- a little less than $14,000 a year, before taxes. So the college’s recent announcement that it’s raising graduate pay to $15,000 or more next year was good news -- to some.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center comments on the concerns Americans have about the Zika virus.

Just a couple of years ago, the most popular reason to move abroad was to escape taxes. More and more, cheap – and even free – college tuition is becoming an enticing factor for young Americans to move abroad. In a survey conducted last year, more than a third of American respondents said they would consider moving out of the country. Nearly half, or 48 percent, cite educational opportunities as the major incentive. And a small but rising number of American students have made the move – in 2012, there were 47,000 college students getting their degrees outside of the US.

Nancy Rothbard of the Wharton School explains a subset of workers, “segmentors,” who prefer to separate their professional and personal lives.

College affordability looms large on the campaign trail this presidential election, as candidates in both parties try to appeal to young voters and their parents, who are increasingly frustrated with runaway tuition prices. Bernie Sanders has attracted the most attention on this topic because he has been consistent on one promise throughout his campaign: to make college free. The simplicity and universality of his message is reminiscent of a promise of free college from another politician more than two decades ago: Zell Miller.

Sam Chandan of the Wharton School says, “Chinese investors are the newest players on the scene, but they have very quickly grown to become the dominant player in those gateway markets.”

A “ghetto”-themed party hosted off campus by students over the weekend set off a wave of discussion about race and a lack of diversity at Fairfield University, a mostly white Roman Catholic institution here. University officials learned about the party from photos and posts that spread widely on social media, claiming that students had worn brown makeup and “perpetuated racial stereotypes that have no place in our community,” according to a statement from the university president, the Rev. Jeffrey P. von Arx.

The University of California at Irvine is walking away from two gifts to establish endowed chairs in Hindu and India studies after faculty members and students raised concerns about the ideology of the donors and the influence they sought to exert in the search process. The gifts in question came from the Dharma Civilization Foundation, a California entity that seeks to fund the academic study and teaching of Indian religions as a corrective to what it describes as widespread misrepresentations of Hinduism by scholars who do not practice the religion.

Cedar Crest College beginning in spring 2018 will guarantee every sophomore in good standing the chance to study abroad - at no extra cost beyond regular tuition, the school announced Monday. Full-time sophomores with a minimum 2.5 GPA will get the chance to spend seven to 10 days in another country with their classmates under the program. The trip will take place over spring break, and no class time will be missed, the college said. The college estimates the vast majority of the 180 to 200 students in the class will participate.