Why is it UPENN's responsibility to solve these issues? This is Philadelphia's problem, the university is just a business operating in the city.
American Universities, historically, are supposed to improve not just their students’ lives but also society as a whole, especially as serving as boosters for the city they’re in and their immediate neighbors. That’s why they’re nonprofits. That’s also likely their strongest lifeline to remain relevant in the future rather than as the hollow alumni clubs and gatekeepers their critics say they are, with AI/the internet/online schooling/topic of the day breaking down socioeconomic barriers to knowledge access
That’s why the Carnegies and Mellons built libraries, museums, and the very literally named Carnegie-Mellon university, back then. Now it seems like the first thing billionaires today do is isolate themselves and their wealth from the masses as much as possible.
Historically speaking, wealth accumulation was borderline impossible because the incentive to steal it was so large. You had to become a king, and then constantly murder people trying to take the throne, because everyone had the attitude that the only way to acquire wealth was to steal it from others. And that never really worked out well since the king was always threatened by death (the Sword of Damocles).
This stopped when the upper classes realized it was cheaper and more effective to raise the living standard of everyone else than it is to prevent everyone else from stealing their wealth. When you create wealth, you share some of it with others.
In other words, create a society where everyone has salt and pepper, rather than try to hoard salt/pepper for financial gain.
That's true of schooling as well. In the Middle Ages, only the rich and powerful could read and write. Now that everyone knows how to read, Facebook has a trillion-dollar business selling words.
This mentality is present in FOSS to some extent, but it isn't present for education anymore. Everyone seems to think good universities are a perpetually limited good, so we fight over limited admissions spots rather than figure out a way to deliver high quality education to the masses.
It's stupid, because bumping up the difficulty is how we make education worthwhile.
There’s a bit more to it than that. There’s a reason Xi Jinping doesn’t need to murder members of his cabinet all the time. A stable government has a winning coalition which keeps the leader in power. The leader has to keep them happy which in small enough governments he can do by paying them directly.
In a democracy, the winning coalition is way too large to simply pay supporters. The government has to fund public works which are more cost effective. A larger winning coalition is better for the median person for this reason.
Their duty is to deliver education. It's not solving political problems meant for elected officials (and the population at large).
Presumably they could spend a little bit of that to deliver some more education, couldn’t they?
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/231...
[0] https://datausa.io/profile/university/university-of-pennsylv...
Harvard really did a number on my belief in American academia, and then finding out that students in Columbia were complaining they had to read made me not want to look at those types of statistics very often.
Anyways, appreciate the work of actually delving into the payscales, teacher / administrator ratios, and allocation of funding. Also, the https://datausa.io/ site's another interesting one to add to the list of public available dataset visualization, plotting, and summarization websites.
Actually, quick check from a different direction at least seems to support some of the Philly issues. Violent Crime rate per county on datausa.io: https://datausa.io/map?measure=E1cxD&groups%5B0%5D=24yFSi%7C...
Death by Homicide is also interesting lateral, although Mississippi apparently has a huge issue all over the state. Many 25+ / 100,000 areas: https://datausa.io/map?measure=ZfwdDB&groups%5B0%5D=24yFSi%7...
Unfortunately, website seems to trigger alot of Network Errors on the map portion of the site.
Rich alumni, patents, etc. Also, it is a warchest for innovation and expansion. Same thing as other businesses, you have a surplus of cash for reinvestment.
It isn't.
Despite the name, it's actually a private university.
Penn State is Pennsylvania's land grant university.
The University of Pennsylvania is one of the nine colonial colleges founded before the United States existed. It predates land grant institutions by over a century. I think you are confusing it with Pennsylvania State University, which is a land grant institution.
Who's responsibility is it? Have you seen how the government operates? Why wouldn't UPENN want to help solve it?
How much have you contributed to Philly's woes?
Probably nothing, because it doesn't benefit you.
To resolve Philly's woes?
> Probably nothing, because it doesn't benefit you.
If they pay taxes...
If, over the long term, an endowment isn’t growing, it’s being mismanaged.