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What can institutions do to help students make informed choices about higher education? How can we make sense of skepticism surrounding cost, value, and return on investment? Four members of the Penn GSE community at the forefront of these changes spoke at a recent Penn Alumni panel event.

The Penn GSE Magazine takes a look at the three master's programs in teacher education at Penn GSE — and the stories of three of its students, each on their own journey.

Laura Perna speaks about net price calculators and their implications in college admissions. The three buckets that matter for college opportunity are financial aid, academic readiness, and information, she says. Net price calculators are an “important mechanism to help people understand really early on in the process ideally, how much it will actually cost.”

Jonathan Zimmerman opined that the role of an educational institution is to make its students more aware, informed and thoughtful adults through structured dialogue – not necessarily to discipline them for words spoken and actions taken in the past.

One of many virtual offerings of Penn GSE’s Center for Professional Learning, the Strategic Leadership Certificate program is helping educators strengthen their effectiveness and deepen their impact.

Penn GSE’s newest associate professor on “curricular complexity,” how too many choices can overwhelm students, and the human stories behind big data.

As 2022 gets rolling, let's take one last look back at our top stories of 2021.

Drawing on pre-pandemic data, Robert Zemsky predicted that 20% of higher education institutions were in danger of shuttering.

Amalia Daché spoke about the mistreatment of protesters in Cuba. “Cuba is a political apartheid. There is definitely racial discrimination happening in Cuba,” she said. “When Cuba gets a cold, Afro-Cubans get the flu, and they die.”

The NCAA is hosting a Constitutional Convention to consider “sweeping” changes to how it governs college athletics. What's at stake? What does it mean for the future of college athletics?

Laura Perna said that applying for financial aid can be complicated for students. However, the Alamo Promise program, which provides students in Texas with free tuition and additional services, sends “a clear message with no fine print,” she said.

Penn GSE exceeded the largest fundraising goal in its history, dramatically increasing support for priorities across the School.

While migration research tends to focus on migrants and the countries that receive them, Briana Nichols, a joint doctoral candidate in Education, Culture, and Society, and Anthropology, chose to focus her research on the community members who are fighting to stay.

Laura Perna discussed how the challenges of constructing debt-free degree programs may be daunting for colleges, but the ends justify the means: The programs create a more socioeconomically diverse student body, to the benefit of everyone.

Laura Perna spoke about how so-called College Promise Programs that reduce the costs of attending college may encourage more students to enroll — but cautioned a number may still be deterred by fears of hidden costs.

Penn GSE’s Robert Zemsky, an expert on higher education, is leading a new project called “College in 3” to explore the feasibility of creating intentional three-year degree programs.

2009 McGraw Prize winner, Sarita E. Brown, co-founded Excelencia in Education in 2004 to accelerate Latino student success in higher education by identifying, analyzing and disseminating information on effective higher education practices that highlight problems and solutions facing Latino students.

The Penn GSE community mourns the loss of longtime staff member Betty Deane, who served an extraordinary tenure of more than five decades at the School.

Penn GSE alumni in educational leadership roles are at the forefront of organizations’ efforts towards advocacy, overcoming barriers, creating paths to success, celebrating differences, and more.

Laura Perna spoke about efforts to make community college tuition-free. "There's power in the message that tuition is free. Figuring out how much college costs is complicated," she said.

2013 McGraw Prize winner, Deborah Bial is the President and Founder of the nonprofit The Posse Foundation which uses its signature Posse model to support young scholars with diverse demographic backgrounds through attending, enrolling and completing college and emerging as strong leaders from diverse backgrounds who are able to develop consensus solutions to complex social problems.

Amalia Daché criticizes people who have blamed the U.S. embargo and not the Cuban government for the crisis in Cuba. “She was shocked to see how the U.S. media and Twitter were taking Afro-Cubans out of the narrative and blaming the U.S. and the CIA for the demonstrations,” she said.

Laura Perna spoke about accommodating the needs of adult students. “There is a complexity to adult learners,” she said. “It is really recognizing, ‘What are the circumstances of individual people’s lives?’ If someone is to enroll in college, how do you make it possible for them to attend?”

Penn GSE’s Amalia Daché has studied Afro Cuban life and educational opportunities under Cuba’s dictatorship. She says the world is seeing Afro Cubans’ frustration with the racist and classist society the regime maintains.

Seeing hope amidst current challenges, Penn GSE professors, scholars, and graduates are examining the changing landscape of higher education and envisioning opportunities to advance educational opportunity and racial justice.

Laura Perna argues that making community college tuition-free should be a national priority.

Three distinguished Penn GSE alumni shared their perspectives on finding strength in the face of adversity, supporting mental health, and rallying to improve social justice.

Amalia Daché spoke about the importance of diverse educators. “Although I was successful at navigating higher education, not seeing or identifying with teachers always made me feel like I was an outlier,” she said.

Penn GSE’s Karen Weaver argues that legislation pending in Congress points to the need for college athletes’ voices to be a bigger part of the conversation.

Perna: “We have seen so many proposals for free college and debt relief in the past year, even amidst a pandemic, because the painfully high cost of a degree is stifling another generation of young people and continuing to shut out minority and low-income Americans."

This spring, Garrett became Assistant Dean for Student Affairs in Yale’s Office of Gender & Campus Culture and the Alcohol and Other Drugs Harm Reduction Initiative.

College costs are complicated, but that's not an excuse to hide important information, Laura Perna says.

Karen Weaver wrote about how the merging of six of Pennsylvania’s state colleges will affect student athletes.

Marcus Wright, a doctoral student in higher education, found that when colleges had to talk about COVID-19, they rarely prioritized first-generation students.

Laura Perna pointed to equity gaps in labor market returns for people who hold the same type of college credential, noting that the risk of taking out a loan to attend college isn’t distributed equally in society.

In the Conversation, Laura Perna, Jeremy Wright-Kim, and Elaine Leigh examine the design of free college programs and how the design influences their effectiveness.

Karen Weaver spoke about gender inequity in the NCAA. “There’s a number of inequitable decisions that have been made in addition to the ones we talked about this year that just haven't drawn the same amount of attention,” she said.

In University World News, Laura Perna and William Tierney write “Academic life, as we have lived it, and as we envision it for you, is about challenging norms and creating a society that foments democracy.”

Laura Perna talks about her research, issues of college access, affordability and success for first-generation, under-resourced students and why she has dedicated her life to this specific research.

‘It’s time for college athletics to put their considerable wealth and purchasing power behind supporting black-owned businesses,’ Karen Weaver writes in Forbes.

Nominations for the 2021 McGraw Prizes in Education are open through April 15.

Sigal Ben-Porath joins host Jay Shapiro to explore what protections universities owe their students.

There is no universal answer. But Penn GSE’s Karen Weaver says the colleges facing the toughest choices might not be the ones you’d think.

Jonathan Zimmerman writes about the declining availability of tenure-track positions and a movement toward preparing doctoral students for jobs outside the academy, but suspects the change will come from outside of the academy, not from within it.

Jalil Mustaffa Bishop, Vice-Provost Postdoctoral Scholar and Penn GSE Lecturer, recently co-authored an NAACP report examining the ongoing effect of student debt on Black students and families.

Jonathan Zimmerman’s The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America is a richly researched, eye-opening history of college teaching in the United States over a span of more than a century and a half, mining personal papers and institutional records and reports from over 50 archives.

Penn GSE’s Bob Zemsky detailed how many colleges were close to the financial brink just before the pandemic hit. Here’s what he says colleges face in the next year and beyond.

Sigal Ben-Porath discusses how our understanding of open expression and some of the boundaries of free speech that we find ourselves negotiating in this polarized time affects our ability to find common ground as a society, and what are some of the ways that higher education institutions and society more broadly can overcome polarization and mistrust and create a more engaged democratic community.

Sigal Ben-Porath spoke with host Jonathan Friedman, along with guest Vicka Bell-Robinson, director of residence life at Miami University, about how campuses can facilitate respectful and productive dialogue across political differences during this tense time