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War and Illness Cloud Prospects for Study Abroad
By TAMAR LEWIN
The New York Times, April 9, 2003


ICHMOND, Ind. — Lindsay Enders, a biology major at Earlham College, is thoroughly excited about her plans to study in Kenya starting in August.

But her parents, Cheryl and Gary Enders, have never been thrilled about her going to live in a distant nation with a substantial Muslim population and a history of terrorism against Americans. With the war in Iraq, they are even more worried.

"I have to admit, I'm kind of hoping the program gets canceled," Mrs. Enders said. "My husband is still wishing we'd said no."

Over the last decade, the number of college students studying abroad has grown rapidly. According to the Institute of International Education, more than 154,000 students received college credit for study abroad in the school year that ended in 2001, twice as many as a decade earlier. Although most still study in Europe, more each year head for places like New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong, Thailand, Turkey and Kenya.

But this year, with the terror alerts, the war, and now the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, study abroad has become a far more jittery proposition. Just in two weeks, several colleges and universities have canceled trips to Asia, and a few have asked students in Hong Kong and mainland China to come home.

For the most part, parents rather than students are the ones who are seriously worried. Many say they tune in to the news in a new way, listening for updates on the war and bulletins on the spread of SARS. Some log on daily to Web sites to check government warnings about their children's destinations.

"SARS is a different kind of experience," said Geoffrey Gee, director of study abroad at the University of Pennsylvania, whose students in Hong Kong and mainland China are staying put. "You can deal with political situations by telling people to stay away from dangerous areas. But here there are so many unknowns that everyone's a little worried."

Programs in the Middle East have had months to prepare for war. The Council on International Educational Exchange suspended its spring-semester program in Jordan this year, and last fall, Earlham shelved its plans for a new program in Jordan.

But programs in Asia are scrambling to deal with SARS. Syracuse University canceled its Hong Kong program and brought students home. The University of Michigan and Indiana University Bloomington have asked students in China and Hong Kong to come home. The Semester at Sea has canceled its visits to Hong Kong and Vietnam.

Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and the Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis have canceled China programs that were to start in June.

Many program directors have concluded that putting young people onto airplanes for travel back to the United States may be risky.

"I would be amazed if people would be put on airplanes to move around, because it seems like that's how the disease is spreading," said Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education. "It's probably still just a little too soon to know what are the most effective things for people to be doing."

But administrators agree that the situation is unsettlingly fluid.

For parents, the timing of the SARS outbreak could hardly be worse. Oriana Mastro, who is heading to Beijing on June 17 to stay for a year, said her mother was growing more worried all the time.

"Every day she brings up the respiratory disease," said Ms. Mastro, a student at Stanford University who went home to Chicago for spring break. "She's one of these moms who's very paranoid."

True, said her mother, Claudia Skylar. "I am hysterical about this mystery illness," she said. "I'm worried she'll get sick. I'm worried she'll meet some weirdo in a bar."

It is too early to gauge how such worries will affect the numbers going abroad during the next academic year. While some schools and study-abroad groups say that their numbers may be slightly down, others are reporting an increased demand for overseas study.

At Earlham, where two-thirds of the students do some off-campus study before graduation, 94 have signed up for next fall, compared with 72 last fall. "I think that right now is a good time to go," Lindsay Enders said. "With the world situation, cross-cultural understanding is more important than ever."

Her parents, in Logansport, Ind., say they admire her commitment to international relations, but wish they could rein it in. "We told her at the beginning we wished she was going somewhere else, like Hawaii," Mrs. Enders said. "She said, and she wasn't being flippant, that we could say no now, but then she'd get that kind of experience by joining the Peace Corps when she got out of school, and then she'd be gone for two years, probably in a worse place."

Students tend to play down the risks, saying that trouble can arise anywhere and that they will not base their decisions on fear.

"They're all immortal at this age; they think they'll be fine no matter what," said Barbara Spencer, a foreign-study adviser at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where 115 students are going abroad next year, compared with 140 this year.

At the Institute for the International Education of Students, which administers programs for students from dozens of colleges, applications for programs this summer are down 10 percent, and down slightly for next year as well.

Even where the numbers do not show it, there is a new nervousness. Last month, Katie Learish, a student at Pennsylvania State University, signed up to spend the summer in Barcelona, through an institute program. But when the war began, she tried to find out how much money she would lose if she backed out. The institute, mindful of the growing worries, changed its policy, giving Ms. Learish and others until May 1 to cancel without losing their $500 deposits. "I'm nervous, but not to the point where it would stop me," Ms. Learish said.

Many students are wondering how they will be received overseas.

Peter Lewis-Lakin, a student at Kalamazoo College, who is going to Turkey in August, said he is wondering whether to pretend to be Canadian while he is there. "I don't think of Turkey as a dangerous place, but I am a little worried about being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

 

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Where the money comes from

Benefactor Wants Colleges to Deliver a Stronger Civics LessonBy KAREN W. ARENSON
The New York Times, April 7, 2003

Twenty-two years ago, at an elementary school in Harlem, Eugene Lang, a self-made millionaire who had been drafted to deliver the school's graduation address, impulsively pledged to pay for college for every one of the graduates.

In subsequent years, he nurtured and supported the students — 61 in all — trying to groom them for college the way middle-class children are groomed, in houses filled with books and high expectations.

His program, named "I Have a Dream," inspired by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech, proved magical in both its simplicity and its impact. Most of the children not only made it to college, but graduated, an exceptionally high rate for inner-city children. And many other wealthy Americans, inspired by Mr. Lang's example, adopted their own classrooms.

Now he is trying again. Having created one powerful social program, he feels driven to create another, and on an even grander scale. His quest this time is to find a way to build political and civic engagement among young people in America, about 70 percent of whom, he pointed out, did not vote in the last presidential election.

He is convinced that the solution lies in the transformation of higher education.

"College," he said, is the most logical place to grab the minds of young people.

Last week in Manhattan, he convened representatives from 10 colleges and universities — students, professors, presidents and other officials, nearly 150 in all — to plot strategy. They are the pioneers in his latest venture, which he has christened "Project Pericles," after the military leader and statesman who advanced Athenian democracy in the fifth century B.C. The colleges are a varied mix that includes Swarthmore in Pennsylvania, Pitzer in California, Pace University in New York City and Bethune-Cookman in Florida.

For two days, the conference participants debated issues like how to meld community service and classroom teaching, whether colleges are ready to award tenure for civic engagement, whether community members should have more of a voice in the university and whether college officials would be pleased if students became politically active about issues like higher wages for maintenance workers.

While Mr. Lang and many educators are concerned about the lack of participation in American politics, some of the students argued that politics is not the only measure — or the best measure — of civic engagement.

"People are disillusioned by politics," said Kai Xu, a senior at Swarthmore. "We should encourage them to be socially responsible. Some people can go out and do hands-on work."

Anne Shoup, a political science major from Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, agreed: "One thing we have to do is expand people our age's idea of participation," she said.

Mr. Lang has spent three years laying the groundwork for his new project, which he dreamed up in 1999 when invited to write an article about liberal arts education for the journal Daedalus.

A longtime trustee and board chairman of Swarthmore College, his alma mater, Mr. Lang is passionate about liberal arts education. And his work with "I Have a Dream," Swarthmore and other educational institutions has given him strong convictions about the importance of social responsibility — and its absence in American society.

He argues that if students are to absorb civic values in a way that will affect their lives, they must be transmitted throughout the college experience, starting with the classes themselves. His model is the early American colleges whose mission, he wrote in Daedalus, was to develop personal character and groom leaders.

"Today," he wrote, "unlike their forebears, liberal arts colleges do not as a general rule feel impelled to exercise a proactive role in preparing students for service in their communities."

That is what he hopes to change. The colleges he has lined up are mostly small liberal arts colleges. All are private, and some have loose affiliations with religious groups. Mr. Lang hopes that being a "Periclean college" will be like having the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

Joining the program does not bring a lot of money. Except for Swarthmore, each college is receiving only $50,000, contributed by Mr. Lang and the Carnegie Corporation. Each campus must match that amount. Over the years, Swarthmore has received millions of dollars from Mr. Lang, who built a business around squeezing extra value out of underused patents.

Although each college is expected to develop its own blueprint, they all must follow certain ground rules. One is that all constituencies of a college must be involved: trustees, administrators, faculty members, students, and alumni. For a college to qualify as a Periclean, the trustees have to pass a resolution making civic education an explicit part of its mission. And the board chairman has to attend a meeting with Mr. Lang to discuss the project.

Mr. Lang also believes that community experience must be an integral part of a student's education, so the local community has a role to play, too. But last week, students complained that community groups had not been invited to the conference in Manhattan.

"We have to break down barriers," said Cassie Compton, a student from Hampshire College in Massachusetts. "We have to bring community people in to see what they need. The programs I see pushing the envelope do that."

One of the most serious challenges, conference participants said, will be winning faculty support. Mr. Lang wants each class, whether mathematics, history or French, to offer a glimpse of its social relevance.

Some conference participants, however, said that not all professors will be equally interested. Even those who might be interested may hold back, they said, for fear that a focus on social and civic work could eat up time for traditional research needed for career advancement.

"Junior faculty especially have to worry about promotion and tenure," said Thomas E. Arcaro, a sociology professor at Elon University in North Carolina.

But Elon is one of the colleges that have begun to create special incentives for professors to mix civic lessons with more traditional coursework. The university is also offering $1,000 course enhancement grants and one-month sabbaticals for staff members to work on community service projects.

"Would I go so far as to say that this will transform higher education?" Nancy Midgette, Elon's associate provost, said. "I'm an optimist."

"The heart of Project Pericles is to educate an informed citizenry," she added. "A lot of students say they need a college education to get a job and to be successful. We would like them to say I need a liberal education, period.

"I don't know that we will ever awake it in everybody. Maybe it is a dream that we can awaken this in some folk. But if we can move them from where they were, we can feel a certain measure of success. I think Project Pericles can make an enormous difference."

 

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Thêm nữa...

Hàn Quốc ngừng tiếp nhận tu nghiệp sinh VN vì lo ngại SARS
Thứ năm, 10/4/2003

Hôm nay, Cục quản lý lao động nước ngoài (Bộ LĐTB&XH) nhận được công hàm của phía Hàn Quốc yêu cầu từ ngày 9 đến hết tháng 4 sẽ tạm dừng cấp visa cho các tu nghiệp sinh Việt Nam, Trung Quốc, Thái Lan vì lo ngại đây là nguồn lây lan Hội chứng Hô hấp cấp Nặng.

Trước đó, Cục quản lý lao động cũng nhận được thông báo của phía Đài Loan đề nghị các doanh nghiệp cần cách ly lao động trong vòng 10 ngày trước khi đưa sang nhằm giám sát bệnh dịch. Nếu trong thời gian quy định, họ không có biểu hiện bệnh thì mới được phép xuất cảnh. Người lao động cũng phải có giấy xác nhận không nhiễm bệnh SARS của cơ quan y tế Việt Nam. Trường hợp khi đến Đài Loan mà họ phát bệnh thì cơ quan y tế Việt Nam phải hoàn toàn chịu trách nhiệm.

Theo Cục quản lý lao động nước ngoài, thị trường Hàn Quốc rất "kỹ tính", đòi hỏi lao động có tay nghề cao nên số tu nghiệp sinh Việt Nam sang không nhiều (năm 2002 có khoảng 5.000 người). Còn Đài Loan năm 2002 tiếp nhận 15.000 lao động Việt Nam, chiếm gần 1/3 số lượng lao động xuất khẩu của cả nước.

Như Trang, VNExpress

 

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Early Decision

Harvard Adopts New Rules for Early-Admission Applicants
By TAMAR LEWIN, NYT
April 11, 2003

Reversing an admissions policy it announced last year, Harvard announced yesterday that as of this fall it would no longer allow applicants who file for early admission to apply early at other colleges.

William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions, said the change came in recognition of the increasing pressure many high school seniors felt to apply early, even if they did not yet know what university they wanted to attend.

"The process for high school seniors has become more and more frenzied," Mr. Fitzsimmons said. "Guidance counselors tell us it boils down to an early-application free-for-all, which is not healthy. We got 7,600 early-admissions applications this year, 1,500 more than last year. Our system was approaching the point where another jump of that magnitude would make it very difficult to make thoughtful decisions."

Harvard does not require early-decision applicants to promise that, if accepted, they will enroll, and last year, it allowed students to file early-action applications at an unlimited number of colleges, even if one had a binding early-decision policy.

At the same time, Harvard set off a tempest in the teapot of Ivy League admissions by suggesting that it might consider enrolling students accepted under its early-action plan, even if they were also accepted by a university, like Princeton, with binding early admissions.

Mr. Fitzsimmons said Harvard had never really intended to allow admitted candidates to break their promises to another institution.

"Personal qualities and character are paramount in our admissions," he said, "and we want to make sure we take people who honor their commitments."

But the mere suggestion that there could be a breach of the longstanding gentlemen's agreement to respect one another's binding admissions offers set off shock waves at other selective colleges, and last fall Yale and Stanford announced that they were adopting nonbinding early-admissions policies, like Harvard's.

There is considerable overlap among the candidates for Ivy League colleges. This year, Mr. Fitzsimmons said, Harvard accepted 88 early-action applicants who were also accepted early at places with binding early-decision plans.

Under the rules of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, binding plans supersede all other applications, so students accepted under them must immediately withdraw all other applications.

Mr. Fitzsimmons said that to the best of his knowledge all the students involved withdrew their Harvard applications and went to the university they were committed to attend.

"A handful of them had some confusion, or some regrets, and we talked to them, but I know of no one who didn't follow the rules," he said.

"We believe that it's best for most students to have time to make their decisions," he said. "Under our nonbinding policy, students admitted early have until May 1 to tell us whether they're coming here. For many students, it is very helpful to take that time senior year to consider their options, to compare their financial-aid packages, to visit colleges and talk to each other."

 

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Colleges face financial challenge

Squeezed Colleges See Credit Ratings Drop
By GREG WINTER

Though its natty campus may not show it, Clarke College is in an admittedly tight spot. Its student body has shrunk, its endowment even more. At the moment, the college has more debts than money.

"We're all just hanging in there, trying to streamline where we can, yet maintain the academic quality we're known for," said Catherine Dunn, Clarke's president, noting that the college in Dubuque, Iowa, only has enough cash on hand to cover about two months of operations. "We have overcome what seemed like insurmountable things before. Hopefully, this will be no different."

Last week, Clarke became one of 11 colleges and universities to be downgraded by Moody's Investors Service, which analyzes the financial health of institutions to gauge their credit worthiness. Williams College, Illinois Wesleyan University, Mills College and Tougaloo College were among the other institutions to slip at least a notch on the credit scale in the first quarter of 2003. Three others, including Georgetown University, were put on a "watch list" for possible downgrades should their fortunes continue to slide.

It was a record number of downgrades, nearly three times what Moody's reported for the same period last year, and more than five times as many as in the first quarter of 2001. What it reflects, the rating service said, are the competing pressures on private colleges to spend heavily on their campuses despite waning endowments, to keep classrooms filled amid competition from public universities and to raise tuition without frightening away students who seem to be more price-conscious than ever.

"For small, less-wealthy colleges there is definite concern," said Naomi Richman, head of Moody's higher education rating team. "Most institutions will get through this period and remain strong, but there are some that are facing real strain."

While all institutions take it seriously, being downgraded hardly means a college is likely to fold. For a richly endowed college like Williams, the mark is a slight taint on an otherwise sterling financial reputation. Some other colleges, like Mills, say they have few, if any, major building campaigns in the works, so the higher interest rates such ratings bring may not hamper them for now.

Regardless of the impact, the ratings offer a fiscal barometer for colleges in a trying economy, the toughest environment many college presidents say they have ever encountered. Chief among the concerns is the fate of their endowments, a principal source of revenue for colleges that has continued to dwindle with the sagging stock market.

Illinois Wesleyan, for example, has lost nearly half its money in the last two years, with total resources falling to $53 million from $103 million between the 2000 and 2002 fiscal years. The university has since brought in consultants to stem the loss, but the interest the money once generated has been sorely missed, opening a budgetary hole begging to be filled.

"That really leaves you with tuition and gifts," said Kenneth Browning, Illinois Wesleyan's vice president for business and finance, adding that the university's tuition went up 6 percent this year, compared with the national average of 5.8 percent for private colleges.

"We've never felt that we could just increase tuition to whatever we wanted to," Mr. Browning said, "but we have over the last several years gone up slightly faster than the national average."

Whatever fears colleges may have of driving students away, particularly to public universities, widespread budget shortfalls have yielded even higher tuition increases. Nearly a third of the colleges Moody's rated run operating deficits from one year to the next, making some combination of cutbacks and higher price tags virtually inevitable.

"You have to remember, there is also the possibility of scaring away students who wonder why we're less expensive than our peer institutions," Janet L. Holmgren, president of Mills College, said in defense of the decision to raise undergraduate tuition 8.4 percent for the coming year, and as much as 10 percent after that. Moody's expects the college to break even by the 2005 fiscal year.

For all their financial troubles, colleges are borrowing more money to beautify their campuses than they did in flusher times, mostly to ensure a steady flow of students. In the first quarter of 2003, universities took on more than $5.5 billion worth of debt, Moody's reported, a 58 percent increase over the same period last year, and more than twice as much debt as in the first quarter of 2001.

"We have to maintain our competitive edge," Helen Ouellette, Williams's treasurer, said about the decision to take on the $100 million in debt that cost the college its perfect credit rating from Moody's. "We have a perfectly fine student center that's been here for 50 some years, but you never want to rest on those laurels."

 

[Nguyễn Thị Phương Anh (BOORIN)]

ko hieu

 

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Undergrad experience @ Harvard to be changed

Harvard Chief, at Commencement, Vows Change
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN


CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 5 — Speaking on Harvard's 352nd commencement day, Lawrence H. Summers, the university's president, pledged today to reshape the undergraduate experience, including the core curriculum.

Beneath an ashen sky, Mr. Summers spoke proudly of Harvard's many strengths but also said that undergraduate students craved more contact with senior faculty members and that improvement was needed in the mentoring system.

Of the first overhaul of the curriculum in 30 years, he said, "No organization, and certainly not one as creative as Harvard College, should ever go more than a generation without reassessment and renewal."

The college has disclosed few details of the curricular overhaul, which will be a subject of prolonged study.

Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico, who received an honorary doctor of laws degree, used his speech to praise the United States for leading the creation of international institutions in the first half of the 20th century. But he also cautioned Washington against acting unilaterally and abusing its position as the world's sole superpower.

"All the nations on earth, even the most powerful one, need the multilateral system," he said.

In accordance with Harvard tradition, the speeches by Mr. Summers and Mr. Zedillo were given at the Harvard Alumni Association's annual meeting, which followed a ceremony this morning to award degrees. In all, 6,349 degrees were conferred, 1,586 of them to graduates of Harvard College.

At this morning's ceremony, which drew a crowd estimated at 30,000, each group of graduates carried its own prop as degrees were awarded collectively. The business school students waved cash in the air. The law school graduates pumped fists clutching inflatable sharks. Medical school graduates tossed surgical masks in the air, while the graduates of the Kennedy School of Government waved plastic beach balls imprinted with the map of the globe. Divinity school graduates had gold halos attached to their mortarboards.

The ceremony opened with a call to order by the sheriff of Middlesex County, and the first speech was a salutatory address given in Latin by Charles B. Watson Jr.

"Now after reading through innumerable books, after writing endless papers, finally, we have arrived at this day on which, finally relieved from all your cares, you get to hear me speaking in Latin," Mr. Watson told his classmates, according to a translation provided in the program.

In addition to Mr. Zedillo, there were 10 other honorary-degree recipients: Gary S. Becker, winner of the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science; Elliot Forbes, emeritus professor of music at Harvard; Norman C. Francis, president of Xavier University in New Orleans; Ellsworth Kelly, painter and sculptor; Mary-Claire King, geneticist; Donald E. Knuth, computer programming pioneer; Linda Nochlin, art historian; Philip Roth, the novelist; Robert G. Stone Jr., longtime Harvard trustee and fund-raiser; and P. Roy Vagelos, former chief executive of Merck & Company.