Penn in the News

Elaine Holt of the School of Veterinary Medicine is profiled.

Witold Rybczynski of the School of Design talks about the purpose of bollards and protecting pedestrians from vehicles driving on the sidewalk.

Last January, an undergraduate student at Yale posted a suicide note to Facebook and jumped to her death. In her note, she stated that she knew she was depressed, but she was afraid of being forced to leave school as a result. “Dear Yale: I loved being here. I only wish I could’ve had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn’t do it in school…” This example, while devastating, is not an anomaly. Suicide is the leading cause of death among college students. Nearly half of all adults in the U.S.

Oriel College of Britain's University of Oxford has announced that it is starting the process of removing a plaque that honors Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist whose bequest created Rhodes Scholarships. Minority students have been pushing the college to remove the plaque and also a statue of Rhodes. The college announced it is seeking local authorities' approval to remove the plaque, explaining that "this plaque was erected in 1906 by a private individual.

Some colleges put significant resources into recruiting and financially supporting low-income students. But how colleges describe those programs also matters, according to a new paper. If messages from a college suggest that it is "warm" toward students like them, the authors found, low-income students’ academic confidence and identification as high achievers are stronger than if the messages suggest that it is "chilly" — that the needs of students like them are ignored or overlooked. We talked with the paper’s lead author, Alexander S.

Mitchell Orenstein of the School of Arts & Sciences is cited.

Some students at Oberlin College are taking their demands for diversity and racial inclusion to the dining hall, asking for more traditional meals and criticizing what they consider poor efforts at multicultural cooking. It is the latest skirmish in a year marked by protests and other actions by college students to challenge the cultural and racial status quo on campuses across America.

Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School shares his commentary on the Social Security system.

More employers want to hire someone with a bachelor’s degree these days even for jobs that previously didn’t require them, but at the same time recruiters increasingly place less trust in a diploma. Those are the findings from two different studies in recent years. One was an analysis by Burning Glass, a company that evaluates job ads. It discovered, for example, that 65 percent of new job postings for executive secretaries and executive assistants asked for a bachelor’s degree.

A new national beat team has been established at The Associated Press to elevate coverage of issues in education, the news cooperative announced Monday. The team will aim to generate more coverage off the news and explore trends affecting students of all ages, using text, video, photos and interactive multi-format storytelling about how trends in education are affecting children and families across America and around the world.