Penn in the News

Marybeth Gasman of the Graduate School of Education is quoted about a new initiative launched by the Center for Minority Serving Institutions called Pathways to the Professoriate.

James McGann of the School of Arts & Sciences comments on the ranking of think tanks in India.

The preservation process and removal of Museum artifacts due to the demolition of the Penn Tower complex are highlighted.

Colleges nationwide are reckoning anew with race and diversity this school year as students demand steps to curb incidents of hate and discrimination and promote a more inclusive campus culture. Protesters toppled leaders of the University of Missouri, who were perceived as unresponsive to their concerns. They also won agreement from Princeton to review how it honors Woodrow Wilson, a university president and U.S. president who was an advocate for racial segregation.

America’s most prominent public universities were founded to serve the people of their states, but they are enrolling record numbers of students from elsewhere to maximize tuition revenue as state support for higher education withers. The shift has buttressed the finances and reshaped the profile of schools across the country, from the University of California’s famed campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles to the universities of Arkansas, Oregon, Missouri, South Carolina and numerous other places.

Michael Sinkinson of the Wharton School shares his commentary on the use of paywalls by media organizations.

As Coursera tweaks its business model to find a financially viable way to offer massive open online courses, critics say its MOOCs are becoming less open and less like courses. Coursera last week announced the release of dozens of new courses and course sequences, which it calls Specializations, in subjects ranging from career brand management to creative writing. But many of the new MOOCs came with a new barrier to enrollment.

In the debate underway at Yale University over whether a residential community should continue to bear the name of John C. Calhoun, the fraught question is not simply whether to banish the current title but what to put in its place. The matter has taken on new urgency — at Yale and nationally — after student protest last fall cast a harsh light on the university’s racial climate, epitomized for some by Calhoun College, named in the 1930s for the 1804 graduate of Yale College who provided much of the intellectual foundation for the Confederacy.

Bob Thurlow of the Museum and Patrick Dorris of Penn Medicine talk about the process of preserving museum artifacts amidst the demolition of the nearby Penn Tower.

Kent Smetters of the Wharton School is cited for co-authoring research on annuities.