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Volume 12, Issue 1  
REGIONAL NEWS
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
RESEARCH
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REGIONAL NEWS
The University of Costa Rica (UCR) is currently offering a special program in environmental science for undergraduate students from the English-speaking world who want to study the rain forest from a hands-on perspective.
All classes and field trips pertaining to the course of study are conducted in English by UCR professors. Students are provided with private rooms in the homes of Costa Rican families while attending the university. The program includes the following courses: tropical ecology/conservation; natural history; biological diversity; and Spanish at the beginning, intermediate and advanced levels.
Students who successfully complete the program receive four credit hours for each course on a UCR transcript. All credits are transferred from the university’s Office of International Affairs and External Cooperation.
Each semester is 14 weeks long, including 30 days of rigorous fieldwork. The total cost for the spring 1999 semester is $6,995 (airfare not included).
For more information contact the University of Costa Rica at 1-800-321-7625 or by e-mail at WorldC@EducationAbroad.com.
— Costa Rica University,
www.neosoft.com/~worldc/learn.htm
As part of a reform package first introduced in 1995, the State Secretariat for Education, Fine Arts and Culture (SEEBAC) has established a set of guidelines for student evaluation and promotion to a higher grade or educational level.
During the first two years of elementary school (educación básica or educación media) students will undergo evaluation but will automatically be promoted irrespective of exam scores.
In the last six years of elementary education (grades three through eight) students who receive 65 percent or better in all their classes, and who have not been absent more than 20 percent without justification, will automatically be promoted to the next higher grade.
Those who receive less than 65 percent in up to three classes will be eligible for makeup exams. A single failure in any of the makeup exams means the pupil has to repeat the school year. Students who miss more than 20 percent of their classes without justification or who fail four or more subjects are automatically suspended and must repeat the school year.
SEEBAC has also introduced a new grading scale for the secondary school level which reads as follows:
A=90-100=Excelente (Excellent) Students are required to pass all subjects with 70 percent or better (based on continual assessment and final examinations) and not miss more than 20 percent of all classes without justification in order to pass the school year.
The most important reform to date is the introduction of national examinations at the end of elementary school and secondary school. In the final year of their elementary education, students must pass the national examination in order to enter secondary school.
The national examinations administered at the end of secondary school will serve as part of a student’s qualifications to earn a bachiller (bachelor) diploma and will cover all four areas of the school curriculum: Spanish, mathematics, social studies and natural sciences.
— Secretariá de Estado de Educación, Bellas Artes y Cultos
A recent study conducted by the Institute for International Education reports a significant increase in foreign student enrollment at American colleges and universities during the 1997-98 academic year.
According to the report entitled Open Doors 1997/98, the total number of foreigners studying in the United States climbed to 481,280, which represents a 5.1 percent increase over last year’s figures. In addition, the number of Americans studying abroad rose to almost 100,000, which is 11.4 percent more than the prior year.
The figures published in the Open Doors study would appear to reverse a downward trend in foreign student enrollment at U.S. institutions of higher education.
Although the United States attracts the largest number of foreign students worldwide, it has been steadily losing ground throughout the decade to other countries. In the 1980s, for instance, the United States’ share of all international students was 40 percent. However, by 1997 this figure had dropped to only 30 percent, down from 32 percent in 1995.
Experts suggest that the reasons for the sudden increase revealed in the Open Doors report are essentially twofold: Intensified efforts on the part of universities and colleges in the United States to recruit overseas and a growing preference among foreign students towards the less-expensive community colleges.
Although foreign students represent a mere 3 percent of the higher education population in this country, their numbers have a huge impact on campuses and local communities alike. The U.S. Department of Commerce currently lists higher education as America’s fifth largest service-sector export.
Not only do foreigners represent an important source of income for the colleges and universities they attend (most of them pay full tuition), but it is estimated that they contributed some $7.5 billion to the U.S. economy last year in tuition, living expenses and miscellaneous spending.
Moreover, the money spent by these foreign students and their dependents has generated more than 100,000 jobs in state and local economies, according to Open Doors.
— Open Doors 1997/98 Press Release
In a move aimed at bolstering declining enrollments, the University of Chicago (UC) will be relaxing its traditionally rigid core requirements beginning next September.
Many feel that the university’s traditional emphasis on higher learning and a common core curriculum has become anachronistic in an age where students are primarily concerned with preparing themselves for the ever-demanding job market.
Starting in the late 1960s, many American colleges and universities began to phase out certain core requirements to make room for new courses and give students greater flexibility in designing their own curricula. Brown University, which represents the most extreme example in this respect, has done away with core requirements altogether.
While applications and endowments at universities like Duke and Brown are currently soaring, UC is suffering from a decline in the number of new applicants not to mention increasing dropout and transfer rates among its student body. Last year for instance, UC attracted only 5,500 new applicants while Stanford and Princeton enrolled 17,000 and 13,000 respectively.
Contributing to the decline in applicants is the shrinking number of alumni children who cite UC as their college of choice (only 5 percent compared with the 10-20 percent at most Ivy League schools).
Compounding matters is UC’s failure to see many of its students through to graduation compared with other top universities in the United States. The student retention rates at Harvard and Yale, for instance, are 97 percent and 96 percent respectively, compared to only 83 percent at UC.
In an effort to reverse these trends, UC will increase its undergraduate population over the next 10 years from 1,000 to 4,500.
At the same time, administrators plan to restructure the university’s core system. At present, there are 21 core requirements that are subdivided as follows: eight quarters of science and math; seven quarters of humanities and civilization; three quarters of social sciences; and three quarters of a foreign language.
Under the new system, the number of core courses will be reduced to either 15 or 18, depending on how the foreign-language requirement gets figured in.
Hence, starting in September, the core curriculum will only account for one-third of each student’s course work instead of one-half.
In addition, UC President Hugo Sonnenschein intends to improve UC’s career placement service to better meet the needs and expectations of students.
— New York Times
One of the biggest concerns facing liberal arts students today is that the nature of the academic work they undertake in college will not count for much in the real world.
Many graduates who chose to major in subjects like English literature and history are often denied jobs because, they are told, they lack marketable skills.
But students at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia may be getting a leg up while still in school. In an effort to strengthen the ties between the classroom and the job market, the university recently introduced a new “skills transcript” as part of its grading system for undergraduates.
The transcript program allows students to earn extra credit in their regular courses by demonstrating proficiency in such skills as teamwork, problem solving, and written and oral communication that can be transferred from the classroom to the workplace.
At the end of each semester, the skills transcript gets tacked onto the end of a student’s regular grade report.
Although the program is currently being implemented on an experimental basis, it is hoped that ultimately these skills will help liberal arts majors get jobs after they graduate.
But not everyone is eligible to participate. Only students with a “B-” average or better are qualified to earn special credit for mastery of these skills.
— The Chronicle of Higher Education
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