Regional

Accreditations and Acquisitions

The Southern Association of Schools has placed Lexington Community College, in Kentucky, on probation over the question of whether it is truly independent of the University of Kentucky.

Wood College, a two-year private college in Mississippi that lost its accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in March 2002, has closed.

Louisburg College, in North Carolina, and Southern Adventist University, in Tennessee, have both been placed on six-month warning status by the association.

The University of the District of Columbia’s (UDC) law school has been delayed in its efforts to gain full accreditation after an American Bar Association panel raised concerns about UDC graduates’ poor performance on the bar exam.

A year after having its accreditation revoked, Life University has reached an agreement with the Council on Chiropractic Education that will leave the program accredited throughout a “special accreditation process” that should be completed by January 2005.

Corinthian Colleges, Inc. have announced plans to buy CDI Education Corporation, a Canadian company that operates 45 colleges with a total enrollment of about 6,100 students.

Education Management Corporation has announced it will buy 18 junior colleges with a total enrollment of 5,800 students across eight states from American Education Centers Inc. and its affiliated companies.

Brazil

State University Divided Over Quotas

With more blacks than any country outside of Africa and with over 100 classifications describing skin color, State University of Rio has been thrown into the turbulent waters of affirmative action this year. It became the first public institution to implement quotas under new government policies to address the cavernous socio-economic gaps in college admissions (among other things).

Not surprisingly, in a country as ethnically mixed as Brazil, where almost 50 percent of all Brazilians describe themselves as pardo (mixed race) or preto (black), there is plentiful debate and concern about the issue. Maybe the most contentious issue that Brazilians are struggling with is an answer to the question, “What is black?” If someone classifies him- or herself as “coffee with cream,” an official race category on the last census, does he or she qualify for positive discrimination in admissions?

For two decades studies have shown that blacks are firmly entrenched at the bottom of the heap, with less schooling, lower incomes and higher rates of poverty than whites. To address the issue, the State University of Rio has been obliged by law to reserve 40 percent of its places for blacks and half for graduates of state high schools (which, unlike state universities, are for the less advantaged). The experiment has produced mixed results and nearly 300 lawsuits from disgruntled whites. University administrators say that 14 percent of applicants who declared themselves “white” when they took the entrance exam declared themselves either black or pardo when they submitted their applications to the university.

Rio’s quotas may now be scaled back (to 20 percent for blacks and 20 percent for public school students), but the principal is taking hold. The University of Brasília recently adopted a 20-percent quota for blacks, the first federal university to do so. A country that has traditionally prided itself on being a harmonious “racial democracy” now knows it has a race problem, and it is just now wondering how to solve it.

— The Washington Post
June 16, 2003

Canada

Canada’s Troubles in Overseas Recruitment

A recent paper authored by the Conference Board of Canada highlights a major reason why Canada is lagging behind in the market for overseas students. The paper, “Course Correction: Advice on Canada’s Future Foreign Policy,” asserts that the development of educational services as a strategic export industry is hampered by the fractious nature of Canada’s 13 education ministries and a lack of policy coherence in the sector as a whole.

Higher-Edge, a Canadian journal of international education, puts forth further arguments for Canada’s failures in the sector. It argues that “many provincial education ministries lack sufficient knowledge and awareness about both the extraordinary opportunities and the internationally competitive attributes of the international recruitment field—with the exception of New Brunswick.” It goes on to say that many institutions display a similar lack of sophistication, with the exception of Canada’s most successful higher-education institutions in the overseas recruitment field, who, “tired of waiting for governmental leadership, or sectoral leadership among fellow institutions, have developed and executed their own plans.”

— Higher-Edge
May 28, 2003

Chile

Demand for Higher Studies Being Met by Private Institutions

Chile has one of the highest rates of participation in higher education in Latin America, and the growing demand is being met by a burgeoning private sector. Over the past two decades, student enrollment at higher-education institutions has increased from 100,000 in 1980 to 480,000 today, according to official figures.

Private institutions, usually considered academically inferior to state-sponsored institutions, must, by law, be nonprofit and thus charge similar tuition—averaging US$3,000—to fees at public universities. As private institutions make higher education more accessible to the masses, many observers raise concerns that some institutions may not have adequate standards of quality.

Although private institutions are officially nonprofit, institutions are seeking larger sums to finance major expansion through innovative means. Diego Portales University recently issued a bond for US$23 million with backing from the World Bank. Other institutions have sought foreign backers—enter Sylvan International Universities, an American company that recently bought Andrés Bello University for US$68 million. Sylvan already owns the University of the Americas, which mainly recruits students with low grades and represents the largest private institution in Chile, with enrollment skyrocketing from 4,000 to 18,000 in the three years since acquisition. Many are seriously questioning the standards at the University of the Americas and are asking whether that kind of growth is compatible with maintaining quality standards.

Investors in private institutions are said to be making huge profits, despite the nonprofit status of private institutions. One favorite loophole is to form a company that owns a university’s building and land. The institution officially makes no profit but pays a large “rent” to that company.

— The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 27, 2003

Colombia

Quality Assurance through Final-Year Exams

A governmental decree has instituted a compulsory exam that is designed to gauge a student’s level of professional preparedness. The State Exam of Higher Education Quality (ECAES) has already been taken, in a pilot project, by students of law, medicine and mechanical engineering throughout the country.

The Colombian Institute for the Promotion of Higher Education (ICFES) asserts that the exam will aid the state in controlling the quality of higher education by identifying universities that can improve their curriculum, while allowing students to understand their own strengths and weaknesses.

The design and content of the exams have been entrusted to the various associations of university departments and it is hoped that by 2005 there will be exams to assess student preparedness in all subject areas.

— El Tiempo
July 4, 2003

The United States

State Department Eases Student Visa Rules

In May, the State Department said that beginning Aug. 1 face-to-face interviews would be required for almost everyone seeking a visa to enter the United States. In June, under intense pressure from college advocacy groups, officials decided to give foreign students, research scholars and professors priority in scheduling interviews.

Consular offices received the memo in June and were required to officially implement the directives by Aug. 1. The official reasoning behind the move states that foreign students, academics and researchers have been given scheduling priority because of special deadlines and extra paperwork required to process student visas.

— College Journal
July 14, 2003

Is the MBA Losing Its Appeal?

The current economic climate in the United States is one that would traditionally cause a flood of applications for business schools as the young and ambitious return to school, get an MBA and come out the other side when the job market is a little perkier. Application figures at business schools for 2003-04 suggest that this year will not follow that pattern, as applications at some top schools are down by as much as 30 percent.

Explanations for the drop-off include: new visa regulations discouraging foreign MBA students who over the past decade have made up roughly 35 percent of the market; fewer would-be applicants can afford annual tuition upwards of US$30,000; lower investment yields have left some schools with fewer fellowships and scholarships to attract students. The big reason, Business Week argues, is that the MBA no longer guarantees big-salary job offers upon graduation. Over the past two years, potential MBA candidates have seen figures suggesting those corporate jobs are not there in the same numbers. In 2002, 30 percent of graduates in the nation’s top 30 programs had no solid job offer at graduation, while two years earlier that number was a mere 2 percent.

With fewer applicants, MBA programs are somewhat easier to get into, as business schools dig deep into their applicant pools to fill enrollment quotas. As the big schools lower their standards, lower-ranked ones will face problems filling their slots. And if the job market does not pick up, business school admissions departments may well continue to struggle with their enrollment goals.

— Business Week
July 14, 2003