Penn in the News

As the costs of graduate education skyrocket and students demand cheaper, more-convenient ways of learning, colleges and universities are increasingly experimenting with so-called "stackable degrees." Think Lego blocks of college education, letting students start with a MOOC, then add a few more MOOCs to get an online certificate, then add yet more courses to get a traditional master’s degree. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced such a degree on Wednesday.

Laura Huang of the Wharton School is profiled for studying angel investors.

A notorious white supremacist computer hacker has claimed responsibility for sending anti-Semitic fliers to networked printers at several universities across the country, a coordinated cyberattack that included the University of Maryland and Princeton among thousands of targets.

Anne Norris of the Perelman School of Medicine is quoted about the warning signs of Lyme disease.

The first major update in seven years of a database on grade inflation has found that grades continue to rise and that A is the most common grade earned at all kinds of colleges. Since the last significant release of the survey, faculty members at Princeton University and Wellesley College, among other institutions, have debated ways to limit grade inflation, despite criticism from some students who welcome the high averages. But the new study says these efforts have not been typical.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center joins a conversation addressing the media coverage of the 2016 presidential race.

In a brightly lit classroom here at Harvard, Mia Karvonides was trying to explain to a group of bemused student leaders the difference between a romantic encounter and “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” as the university’s relatively new code of sexual misconduct defines it. She tried to leaven the legalistic atmosphere at the town-hall-style meeting with realistic-sounding examples, defying gender stereotypes. Jose and Lisa, chemistry students, are working late at night in the lab, she began, when Lisa comes up from behind and kisses Jose on the neck.

Stephanos Bibas of the Law School says, “We may not have another justice on the court for another year. If they just ditch this case, for a year you persist in having different laws in different parts of the country.”

Undergraduates Vaishak Kumar and Kriya Patel are highlighted as two winners of the President’s Engagement Prize.

In a year in which student activism and free speech issues have dominated conversations on many campuses, and beyond, a Williams College official takes on the concerns of those who argue that students today are too quick to take offense at others’ language and perceived biases. He writes at a time when two speakers who had been invited to Williams as part of a series meant to challenge students with unfamiliar or unpopular views were canceled recently — first by students, last spring, then by the president of the elite private college in Massachusetts last month.