Penn GSE News Archive
Pell Grants Help Students. But Are They Enough?
Laura Perna and Jeremy Wright-Kim write that while Pell Grants reduce financial pressures, this does not translate into higher graduation rates.
Philly Colleges Planning for In-Person Classes This Fall: What We Know
Peter Eckel said, “Part of the challenge is the complexity of the issues that university boards are facing. There is also a degree of unpredictability regarding short-term challenges, like enrollment and finances, endowments and financial resources, but also safety and security in the future. We don’t know if there’s going to be a new normal, a next normal, or return to normal.”
Public and private measures of colleges' financial strength spark more discussion Inside Higher Ed
Robert Zemsky said, in the face of the pandemic, colleges with 1,500 or fewer students are facing the question of how much they can shrink and continue to function.
Book banning is a bipartisan game
Jonathan Zimmerman wrote about efforts by those at both ends of the political spectrum to censor certain books in schools. “It’s too easy to mock the conservatives out in Alaska. It’s a lot harder to look in the mirror, and to ask whether we liberals might be imitating them,” he wrote.
Paranoia about cheating is making online education terrible for everyone
Ryan Baker discussed adaptive learning, which can use algorithms to adapt lessons to individual students, as well as other computer-based learning tools.
College students want answers about fall, but schools may not have them for months
Robert Zemsky said, “It’s revenue pressure, and the sense that ‘if we’re the one that doesn’t open, we lose our share of the market permanently.’”
With football in flux, how Michigan could weather a financial downturn
Karen Weaver discussed some issues that colleges athletics programs are facing during the coronavirus pandemic.
Coronavirus pushes colleges to the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
In his book The College Stress Test, Robert Zemsky predicted that 10% of private, liberal arts colleges in the U.S. were likely to close within the next five years. Now, with the pandemic’s damaging effects on school finances, his prediction has changed to 200 schools in the next year alone.
Coronavirus pandemic brings staggering losses to colleges and universities
Robert Zemsky, in his new book, The College Stress Test, estimates that 10 percent of the nation’s colleges – smaller schools with poor retention rates – were already at risk of closing. Now, he said, “we think another 10 percent is at risk because of the virus.”
4 Guiding Questions for Effective Remote Collaboration
"Teamwork has traditionally played a critical role in schools, and while many of us find ourselves physically isolated, our collaborative work with one another may be more important now than ever," Zachary Herrmann writes.