Penn in the News

The U.S. Department of Education has retreated from its controversial plan to create a giant college-ratings system, top officials revealed on Wednesday. Instead, by late summer the department is now promising to produce a customizable, consumer-oriented website that won’t include any evaluations of colleges but will contain what one official described as "more data than ever before." In effect, it will be a ratings system without any ratings. The as-yet-unnamed new system will allow students and others to compare colleges "on whatever measures are important to them," said Jamienne S.

Jonathan Moreno of the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Arts & Sciences says, “You don’t have to be a faith-based bioethicist to recognize that there’s some global responsibility for modifying the human germline.”

Cade Massey of the Wharton School comments on interviewers who have similarities with interviewees.

Carolyn Marvin of the Annenberg School for Communication comments on Apple removing Civil War games in its App Store that included images of the Confederate flag.

It was a messy affair when the University of North Carolina at Wilmington closed its chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, in 2012. The group was kicked off campus for providing alcohol to minors, sponsoring a social affair after its activities were supposed to be suspended, and then lying to university officials about having done so. So far, the fraternity’s return to the campus isn’t going much better.

Susan Wachter of the Wharton School talks about the current status of homeownership in America.

This viewpoint from the University of Michigan’s president comes as the prestigious public flagship is releasing data from a survey of its students about sexual misconduct. Read about the survey here. The university in Ann Arbor has about 28,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students. — Nick Anderson

Fernando Ferreira and Joseph Gyourko of the Wharton School are featured for researching the impact of subprime mortgages on the financial crisis.

Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli accepted the 2015 Corporate Advocate of the Year Award on behalf of the University from the African American Chamber of Commerce.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center is cited for using baseball metaphors when discussing political rhetoric.