Education
Industry
Snapshot | Economy/Cost of
Living
Recreation
& Entertainment | Transportation
| Geography & Climate
History | Suggested Reading List
Pennsylvania has a strong track record for educational excellence. The state boasts four of the top 50 universities, four of the top 15 undergraduate engineering programs and seven of the top 50 liberal arts colleges in the nation. Nearly 100 institutions in the state have degree programs in biological or biomedical sciences.
The Commonwealth has more than 3,000 public schools in over 500 districts educating 2 million students, over 100 charter schools enrolling nearly 42,000 students (eleven of them cyber charter schools), and close to 2,500 private and nonpublic schools. Public school districts receive funding primarily from local sources and state government; 57 percent from mainly local taxes (real estate tax, the earned income/net profits tax and a mixture of other non-property taxes) and 38 percent from the state. The Commonwealth is one of the top five education spending states with per pupil expenditures approaching $8,000 per year.
The state pays its teachers well and has a low dropout rate among students. As part of the Pennsylvania Accountability System and in compliance with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, Pennsylvania school students are demonstrating continual improvement in math and reading scores for grades five, eight and 11. Seventy-five percent of students go on to college.
Pennsylvania is home to a wide assortment of higher education institutions. 130 colleges and universities are legally authorized to grant degrees in the state. These include 14 state universities (including Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) in Indiana); four state-related universities (The Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Lincoln University in Lincoln, Temple University in Philadelphia, and the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh); eight private state-aided institutions (including the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia); 88 private colleges and universities (including Bryn Mawr in Bryn Mawr, Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Villanova University in Villanova, and Widener University in Chester); 16 Theological Seminaries; six private two-year colleges; one college of technology; and 14 community colleges (including Lehigh Carbon Community College in Schnecksville).
Some of the more renowned advanced degree programs in life sciences in the state are found at Penn, Carnegie-Mellon and Penn State. The University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Biotechnology Program with its distinguished science departments, world-class biomedical research centers and critical location at the hub of the largest pharmaceutical/biotechnology corridor in the nation, is highly qualified to prepare students for careers in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Penn’s Nano/Bio Interface Center explores research in the basic principles of molecular function at the interfaces of physical and biological systems. The Biomedical Engineering Department at Carnegie-Mellon University is dedicated to expanding programs in biomedical engineering, computational biology and chemistry, drug discovery, medical robotics, nanotechnology, neuroscience and tissue engineering. The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University (comprised of the Eberly College of Science, the College of Medicine at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, the College of Agricultural Sciences, the College of Health and Human Development, the College of Engineering, the College of the Liberal Arts and the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences) is committed to fostering research alliances across disciplines and applying basic science to business in innovative ways.
Related Resources:
Back to Destination Pennsylvania
|
