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Penn in the News
A round-up of Penn mentions in local, national, and international media.
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Penn In the News
MIT Floats a New Online Credential: The MicroMaster’s
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced Wednesday the creation of an online track for getting a certain type of master’s degree, an experiment with the potential to open up its admissions process to the world as never before. Here’s the idea: Anyone can take a suite of courses in supply chain management designed by MIT through the free online Web site known as edX. Those who do well in that semester of study and pass a set of proctored exams can earn what’s called a “MicroMaster’s” from the online unit of MIT called MITx.
Penn In the News
How Scientists Fool Themselves – and How They Can Stop
Jonathan Baron of the School of Arts & Sciences and Uri Simonsohn of Arts & Sciences and the Wharton School are quoted.
Penn In the News
Penn Scientists’ Work on ‘Ghost Particles’ Contributed to Nobel Win
Josh Klein and Eugene Beier of the School of Arts & Sciences are highlighted for being a part of a group of researchers who helped design and build high-tech particle detectors and analyzed results.
Penn In the News
Student Debt Is Worse Than You Think
After a series of blockbuster hearings held 25 years ago on abuses in the higher education industry, Congress created a system to protect undergraduates from risky student loans. But two weeks ago, the Education Department released a trove of new data suggesting that the system is failing and that, at some colleges, the saddling of students with loans they cannot afford to pay down is far more dire than anyone knew. The loan crisis hits hardest at colleges enrolling large numbers of students from low-income backgrounds.
Penn In the News
‘We Live on Edge’
Jessie Cain was on his way to pay his son's tuition bill at the Community College of Philadelphia yesterday morning when crime-scene tape went up around him on Spring Garden Street near 16th and police officers forced him back down the block. Reports of an armed man on campus had placed the school on lockdown and Cain, 67, who worked in school security for four decades before his retirement, stood helpless at the corner, wondering if his son, Khalif, who was inside one of the classrooms, would be all right.
Penn In the News
The Three Things Humans Will Always Do Better Than Robots
Dean Vijay Kumar of the School of Engineering and Applied Science comments on how flying robots are programmed to figure things out.
Penn In the News
Judge Rejects Request by Paul Smith’s College to Change Its Name
In the rarefied world of multimillion dollar gift-giving, Paul Smith’s College, named for a 19th-century hotelier and tucked in the forests of northern New York State, carried little cachet. So when Joan Weill, the wife of the Wall Street billionaire Sanford I. Weill, proposed a $20 million gift that would lift the struggling college’s fortunes, its officials saw national prestige on the horizon. Mrs. Weill’s only condition — one that experts say is becoming more common among major donors — was that the institution become Joan Weill-Paul Smith’s College.
Penn In the News
German President Calls for Stronger Trans-Atlantic Relations
German President Joachim Gauck’s remarks while at Penn about U.S.-German relations are highlighted.
Penn In the News
Gene Therapy for Rare Cause of Blindness Shows Promise
Albert Maguire of the Perelman School of Medicine is quoted about gene therapy used to improve eyesight.
Penn In the News
A Faculty’s Stand on Trigger Warnings Stirs Fears Among Students
Faith N. Ferber, a junior at American University, finds herself intensely drawn to a subject that profoundly upsets her: sexual violence. She focuses her studies on it, helps run a campus group that advocates against it, and hopes someday to have a career fighting it. At the same time, she says, unexpected classroom discussions of the topic give her panic attacks — a reaction she attributes to post-traumatic stress disorder from being assaulted off campus just over a year ago. Such surprises can send her fleeing into a hallway or leave her rattled for days, she says.