Penn in the News

Karl Ulrich of the Wharton School pens an op-ed on the importance of merging the entrepreneurial journey with a strong curriculum.

Donations to capital campaigns for new facilities and commitments to cover more aid for athletes helped major-college athletic departments raise more than $1 billion in 2015, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Council for Aid to Education. It was the fourth time in the past five years that gifts for athletics had crossed the billion-dollar mark. But there are signs that donors may be reaching their limits, as overall athletics donations to the reporting institutions dipped slightly in 2015 from the year before.

Several new ratings reports from Moody’s Investor Service that landed in my e-mail inbox this week give plenty of clues about where higher education is headed in the United States. Moody’s examines the finances of more than 500 colleges and universities that issue debt through the public markets. While some might place little trust in the analyses of Moody’s or the other major bond-rating agencies after they were so wrong about the 2008 housing crisis, in higher education the ratings still provide a good indicator of the strengths and weaknesses of colleges and universities.

The National Science Foundation this week issued a statement calling on the colleges and universities that receive its grants to do a better job of preventing and dealing with harassment in science -- and the agency has warned that it would terminate funding to institutions that do not take required steps to prevent and deal with harassment. The statement says that the NSF "holds responsible" colleges and universities that receive its funds.

Jonathan Moreno of the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Arts & Sciences writes about the symbolic power behind an empty podium to represent the absence of Donald Trump at the Iowa Republican debate.

Ezekiel Emanuel of the Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School is cited for speaking out against efforts to extend longevity.

After two years of healthy growth, colleges' endowment investment return rates fell in 2015. While they didn't come close to the declines of some years in the past decade, the average rate is the lowest reported since 2012. On average, colleges had 2.4 percent returns for the 2015 fiscal year, according to an annual survey by Commonfund and the National Association of College and University Business Officers. The survey includes data from 812 U.S. colleges and universities. That’s considerably lower than the past two years, when returns hit the double digits.

Debate continues to boil in Texas over a new law allowing concealed weapons across college campuses. This week a prominent physicist at the flagship University of Texas at Austin said he would seek to bar guns in his classroom even after the law takes effect in August. “I will put it into my syllabus that the class is not open to students carrying guns,” Steven Weinberg, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1979, was quoted as saying in the Austin American-Statesman. “I may wind up in court.

Joan Goodman of the Graduate School of Education defines “no excuses” charter schools.

Temple University's hotly anticipated new library is still two years away from completion, but renderings released Tuesday from the architecture firm leading the project are whetting appetites among many alumni and students. Snøhetta, the architecture firm building the library at 13th Street and Pollet Walk, called the design a "vibrant center for both students and the surrounding community. "The Temple University library will provide a new social and academic heart for the campus of 37,800 students," according to a statement on the firm's website.