Penn in the News

Meenakshi Bewtra of the Perelman School of Medicine and lead author of the study cited says, “We often think of surgery as being more ‘dangerous’ in patients who are older but this study shows that surgery is quite the opposite.”

Families are spending more on college, but parents are less concerned about that investment paying off, according to the results of a new survey from Sallie Mae, the student lender. The study is based on phone interviews with 800 traditional-aged undergraduates and 800 parents of traditional-aged students. It is the eight installment of the survey. Results show that spending on college was up across the board this year, but that a 25 percent increase by high-income families was responsible for the bulk of the increase.

Sy Stokes typed the words into his phone. He typed during class, on the way to dinner, and long after midnight while his roommates slept. Whenever something angered him, he’d write a line or two. One day he sat down to gather the words into a poem. It begins softly, then turns fierce as thunder. That was late summer, 2013. Mr. Stokes, then a junior at the University of California at Los Angeles, had performed his own spoken-word poetry at open-mic events. He had written lyrics about love and the mystery of beauty: "How a rat will look at a bat / Like it has the wings of an angel."

Charles O’Brien of the Perelman School of Medicine comments on repeat DUI offenses.

Ralph Rosen of the School of Arts & Sciences talks about his experience with social media platforms banning words.

Anusha Kalbasi and Justin Bekelman of the Perelman School of Medicine are highlighted for research into the impact of radiation on prostate cancer patients.

Graduating into a recession stunts the careers of the young men and women entering the labor market. But it turns out a lot of students don’t sit back and passively accept this outcome: Many students who see a recession during their early college years switch to majors with better job prospects. According to new research from Benjamin Keys at the University of Chicago, Brian Cadena at the University of Colorado Boulder and Erica Blom at Edgeworth Economics, the shifts can be dramatic.

Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School is quoted about airlines having a “‘balkanized’ working environment.”

These days, it’s widely accepted that colleges have some responsibility for their students’ financial lives. College affordability and student-loan debt are now mainstream political issues, peppering the speeches of the president and presidential hopefuls alike. While the job market for new degree-holders has shown signs of improvement, the path from graduation to financial independence is, for many, uphill and uncertain. Students have a lot at stake — especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Many colleges have taken those concerns to heart.

Nearly one in five college and university chief business officers are worried their institutions are at risk of shutting down in the foreseeable future, and skepticism over the financial model of their institutions continues from last year, according to a survey by Inside Higher Ed and Gallup. But are institutions doing enough to navigate an era of financial difficulty?