Newspapers / North Carolina Wesleyan University … / April 27, 1990, edition 1 / Page 7
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East-West relations encouraging more student exchanges APRIL 27,1990 — THE DECREE^ PMJE 7 ’’ By AMY HUDSON When President Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met in November at the Malta Summit they pledged, among other things, to more than double the number of existing student exchanges between their coun tries. The result, observers now say, has been a virtual student rush for foreign programs in the Soviet Union and other European coun tries. “We’re having a difficult time meeting the needs of students,” said Vance Savage, dean of inter national education at Oregon’s Lewis & Clark College. “It’s a whole new ball game now,” declared Kirk Robey, head of foreign student programs at Ball State University in Indiana. Robey, who helps coordinate exchanges with schools all over the world, noted, “A lot of indi vidual institutions are starting exchanges” in the Eastern Bloc. Eventually, he says, students themselves will be setting them up. In the past month half a dozen colleges have asked Lewis & Clark, which also has a reputa tion as a leader in foreign study programs, for advice about set ting up international exchanges. Savage said. Lots of schools, he added, are expanding their study abroad programs or starting from scratch on new ones. Based on figures from the 1987-88 school year, the most recent available, about 62,341 students from 1,700 colleges and universities studied in another country, reported the Institute of International Education. During the 1988-89 school year, about 366,354 students en rolled on American campuses were from another country. Both of these figures likely will increase as the changes in the Eastern Bloc — where many of the ruling communist parties have dismantled themselves, opened their commercial mar kets, created legislatures and freed speech — take hold and as Soviet-American relations con tinue to warm. Savage predicted. At his own school, student demand for foreign study has in creased so much that Savage is trying to establish a second ex change program in the Soviet Union. In the first one, started in the fall of 1988, 10 Lewis & Clark students swap placed with 10 undergrads from Khabarovsk Pedagogical Institute, located in a remote section in the Far East region of the Soviet Union. Setting up an exchange the second time around. Savage adds, is a lot easier. “It took me five years to get that first affiliation in the Soviet Union,” Savage remembered. Then, exchanges had to be set up through the Soviet government. Now, he says, American schools can go directly to Soviet colleges to set up trades. “I could go negotiate half a dozen exchanges now,” Savaid said, adding that “are dying to get people here now.” “The people at my univer sity,” agreed Soviet exchange student Alexander Muratov, “their desire is to get to the United States. To study here would be a dream.” Muratov, who’s fi'om the Re public of Russia and is spending an academic year at Middlebury College in Vermont, said he’s one of only three students from his university of 12,000 students studying in the United States. The number is quickly in creasing. In late February, Har vard University announced with great fanfare that it had accepted its first three masters of business administration students from the Soviet Union. Getting U.S. students over there, moreover, should be a top priority for American colleges, most exchange program officials agree. “Institutions have an obliga tion to provide international op portunities for students,” Savage asserted. Global education, he added, “is going to be one of the major trends in education of the nineties.” * “You can no longer be an edu cated man and just know Western culture,” declared Wilber Chaf fee, a government professor at St. Mary’s College of California near San Francisco. Chaffee’s been pushing to in ternationalize the school’s cur riculum — including set up for eign exchanges — fore 12 years. Only recently, he said, have ad ministrators given him a warm reception, mostly because of imminent changes in the popula tion of California. Demographers predict that by the year 2000, there will be no majority ethnic group. “We have got to meet the edu cational needs of California,” Chaffee said. Changes in Europe and else where, Chaffee added, “have made us feel a little keener what we have to get done.” By many accounts, most col leges have a long way to go. Not enough students study abroad and those who do tend to end up in big cities in Western Europe, Lewis & Clark’s Savage maintained. And most American colle gians, say foreign students, know very little of different cultures. “I have a feeling they’re very curious, but it’s almost obvious they don’t know very much,” says Florian Techel, a Ball State exchange student from West Ber lin. Senate says fraud plagues student aid The federal student aid pro gram is plagued by so much fraud and inefficiency that it no longer works correctly, a Senate panel has charged. “To date we have not found one area that we have examined in the federal student aid pro grams that is operating efficiently or effectively,” said a staff state ment at a hearing by the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on in vestigations. The subcommittee issued the statement after compiling a report about the state of the programs. “Despite lofty goals and good intentions of the student aid pro grams, hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted or fraudulently obtained.” The result, of course, is that legitimate two-year and four-year college students get either not enough financial aid dollars, or none at all. In reply, campus student aid administrators say the Senate study is too general, blaming eve rybody rather than just the institu tions that have high default rates. “The report is oversimplifying a very complex situation,” charged Hal Lewis, financial aid director at Coker College in Hartsfield, S.C. “The broad gen eralization doesn’t apply” to all campuses. Lewis and others say most of the fraud and inefficiency occur at trade schools. “We know that there are some problems, but defaults are often limited to a small number who support to be educational institu tions. Many times the education is inferior, and the student is not properly trained to compete for a job,” said Dallas Martin, execu tive director of the National As sociation of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA). The Government Accounting Office (GAO) noted that Wash ington guaranteed $12 billion in loans to students in 1989, an in crease of 83 percent over the $7 billion loaned in 1983. But the default rate during the same time, added GAO re searcher Franklin Frazier, rose by 338 percent. By 1989, 36 out of every 100 dollars in the loan pro gram went not to students, but to cover defaults. Despite the increase in defaul ters, NASFAA’s Martin believes that, “Overall the vast majority of students and institutions are working hard and doing a good job. It’s important to get to the root of the problem, but don’t give the impression that the whole system is rotten.” Martin, like others in the aid industry, notes a particular prob lem with trade schools, which are for-profit programs dedicated to teaching specific trades like truck driving, cosmetic care, and cleri cal skills. The U.S. Dept, of Education, which administers most federal college programs, estimates that trade schools account for 35 per cent of the schools participating in the federal guaranteed student loan program, but for half the to tal amount of loans that are in default. Martin also thinks part of the problem is that the Education Department, after years of cut backs, no longer has the funds or the manpower to police aid pro grams adequately. While the department is suf fering from cuts, some of the problems have been caused by its top officials, he added. “I have mixed feelings (about the department). It’s very diffi cult to run without the means, but I know of times when money within the department was di verted to hire people at the top levels, leaving the lower levels) without resources,” Martin charged. “Congress is suspicious about giving money after that.”
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