Concept
University of Pennsylvania
Overview
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of founder and first president Benjamin Franklin, who advocated for an educational institution that trained leaders in academia, commerce, and public service.
The university has 4 undergraduate schools and 12 graduate and professional schools. Schools enrolling undergraduates include the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Wharton School, and the School of Nursing. Among its graduate schools are its law school, whose first professor, James Wilson, helped write the U.S. Constitution, and its medical school, the first in North America.
In fiscal year 2024, Penn reported $2.172 billion in research expenditures, ranking second among U.S. universities in the National Science Foundation's Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey. As of June 30, 2025, Penn's endowment was $24.808 billion. The main campus is in the University City neighborhood of West Philadelphia, centered around College Hall. Campus landmarks include Houston Hall, described as the first student union building in the United States, and Franklin Field, which has hosted college football since 1895 and was expanded into a two-tier stadium in 1922. The university's athletics program, the Penn Quakers, fields varsity teams in 33 sports as a member of NCAA Division I's Ivy League conference.
Penn alumni, trustees, and faculty include 8 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 7 signers of the U.S. Constitution, 24 members of the Continental Congress, 3 presidents of the United States, 38 Nobel laureates, 9 foreign heads of state, 3 United States Supreme Court justices, at least 4 Supreme Court justices of foreign nations, 32 U.S. senators, 163 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 19 U.S. Cabinet secretaries, 46 governors, 28 state supreme court justices, 36 living undergraduate billionaires, the only person to ever reach trillionaire status, 5 recipients of the Medal of Honor, and more than 200 Olympic athletes, 43 of whom earned 81 medals (26 of them gold).
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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A kindergarten conducted along the same lines exists in Pittsburgh as part of the city university. It is called “The School of Childhood,” and emphasizes the healthy physical development of the children. The work is centered around the natural interests of children; and while they apparently do not do as much construction work as in the Teachers’ College kindergarten, there is more individual play. The writer has…
John Dewey, Schools of to-morrow
States what University of Pennsylvania is; the author is tied to University of Pennsylvania in the knowledge graph.
It is suggestive that European philosophy originated (among the Athenians) under the direct pressure of educational questions. The earlier history of philosophy, developed by the Greeks in Asia Minor and Italy, so far as its range of topics is concerned, is mainly a chapter in the history of science rather than of philosophy as that word is understood to-day. It had nature for its subject, and speculated as to how…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what University of Pennsylvania is; the author is tied to University of Pennsylvania in the knowledge graph.
If we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize capacities for conduct. This is most immediately obvious in Germany, where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher education is to turn the student into an instrument for advancing scientific discovery. The German universities are proud of the number of young specialists…
William James, Talks To Teachers On Psychology
Close in meaning to University of Pennsylvania; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed University of Pennsylvania
- William Wollaston
- Nelson Goodman
- Frederick C. Beiser
- Jane Addams
- John Dewey
- Noam Chomsky
- Peter Geach
- Saul Kripke
- Paul Guyer
- Jay L. Garfield
- Feng Youlan
- Hilary Putnam
- Charles H. Kahn
- Robert C. Solomon
- Stephen Stich
- Michael Friedman (philosopher)
- Robert Paul Wolff
- Sally Haslanger
- Richard Milton Martin
- Mihailo Marković
- Cristina Bicchieri
- Steven T. Katz
- Loren Eiseley
- William O. Stephens
Related ideas
- John Adams
- Anglicanism
- Public service
- Ivy League
- National Science Foundation
- South Africa
- United States House of Representatives
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Noam Chomsky
- James Wilson (Founding Father)
- Princeton University
- President of the United States
- United States Senate
- Los Angeles Times
- McGill–Queen's University Press
- The New York Times
- Constitution of the United States
- United States Declaration of Independence
- University of California, Berkeley
- World War II
- Thirteen Colonies
- Continental Congress
- Business
- Benjamin Franklin
Place in the tradition
Part of Neoplatonism.
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