Penn in the News

Laura Perna of the Graduate School of Education says, “The gap between the haves and the have-nots is just getting bigger.”

Mitchell Orenstein of the School of Arts & Sciences is quoted about the controversial comments of government officials in Poland.

First-time enrollments of international students in U.S. graduate schools grew by 5 percent between fall 2014 and 2015, a slowdown from the 8-10 percent growth rate seen in the past few admissions cycles but higher than the rate of growth for domestic students (2 percent). For the first time this year the Council of Graduate Schools’ annual survey of new international student enrollments breaks down the data according to degree level. More than three-quarters (77 percent) of first-time international graduate students are enrolled in master’s and certificate programs.

“Bring me that blue box," Jerry L. Falwell Jr. instructs his son Trey. The blue box is gingerly delivered, placed atop a wooden shelf, and carefully popped open. The gun inside, resting atop a gray egg-crate inlay, is huge. Among the arsenal assembled at this outdoor shooting range, which is just up the road from Liberty University’s central campus, the gun in the case stands out. Mr. Falwell, president of Liberty, received it as a Christmas gift from his wife’s parents.

Northwestern University is one of six prominent U.S. schools operating branches in Qatar in a complex called Education City. The university, based in Illinois, has 207 students and 35 faculty members in Doha. Since the branch opened in 2008, specializing in journalism and communication, Northwestern has awarded 137 bachelor’s degrees in the Persian Gulf emirate. The university’s faculty in Doha includes a former managing editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. Stephen F. Eisenman, an art history professor at Northwestern’s home campus in Evanston, has some questions about all of this.

Annette Lareau of the School of Arts & Sciences is mentioned for her research and book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life.

Faculty members in the University of Wisconsin System objected in droves this fall to a survey of their views on tenure, which some said was poorly designed and funded by a think tank that’s taken conservative stances on various state issues. But if the survey was ever any attempt at gathering data to convince Wisconsinites to further weaken tenure in the state -- as some critics have alleged, and which the think tank denies -- it backfired.

Kaiser Permanente, the health system based in California that combines a nonprofit insurance plan with its own hospitals and clinics, announced Thursday that it would open its own medical school in the state in 2019. The system’s leaders said their central goal was to teach Kaiser’s model of integrated care to a new generation of doctors who will be under pressure to improve health outcomes and control costs by working in teams and using technology.

U.S. Senate lawmakers on Tuesday reached a bipartisan agreement to revive the expired federal Perkins Loan Program for two years, though the deal would tighten some of the eligibility criteria. The loan program expired at the end of September after Senate lawmakers did not act on a House measure that would have extended the program for a year. Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Republican who chairs the Senate education committee, had blocked action on the Perkins extension.

Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School comments on entrepreneurs who have a sense of obligation to the people who support them financially through crowdfunding.