|
Volume 12, Issue 5   REGIONAL NEWS PRACTICAL INFORMATION RESEARCH
eWENR Index: Contains links to all eWENR issues that are currently available for viewing.
Masthead: Learn more about eWENR and its editorial staff.
Subscriptions: Don't miss future issues of eWENR.
World Education Services: Learn more about the organization that brings you eWENR.
Comments: eWENR's editor welcomes your comments. If you have story ideas, suggestions or feedback regarding eWENR, e-mail us with the details.
WENR Archives: You can read WENR back issues from Summer 1995 through Fall 1996.
WENR Article Index Through 1996: Features an index of all WENR articles through Fall 1996.
|
Regional News
Student loans in Canada are backed by the government, and awards are based on demonstrated financial need. But even when students take out the maximum loan of $9,000 a year, they find that they still do not have enough money to cover all their expenses while in school. Hence, more and more students are turning to banks and credit-card companies to help pay for tuition, miscellaneous fees and living expenses.
The Canadian Federation of Students has condemned this practice and urges students to be wary of credit cards in particular.
Financial institutions have invaded campuses around the country in recent years, offering students credit cards that carry steep interest rates. Many of these students, who have little or no form of income, end up getting into terrible debt with credit card companies. Default on a payment can seriously damage a person’s credit rating for years, making it impossible to take out a mortgage or car loan.
— The Toronto Star
Honduras’ educational system has been in a state of decay for many years now due to abject poverty and a series of civil wars. Schools and universities have frequently been crippled by protracted strikes, organized by students and teachers, while many parents refuse to send their children to schools that are unsafe and unproductive.
Few students make it through high school, and of those who do manage to graduate, many are semi-illiterate and unprepared for the job market. Honduras has the fastest population growth rate in the Americas, with most people under age 25.
Even though the education budget is higher than ever before, the government has been hard-pressed to yield any positive results.
— Honduras This Week Online
The purpose of the new law is to make bachelor programs more accessible to students who live in remote areas where there are no universities. There is a strong need to expand these programs because Florida does not have any four-year state colleges and its 10-campus university system is unable to satisfy the growing demand for higher education. At present, only 29 percent of Florida’s 19-year-olds are attending college. Although the state’s 28 community colleges will not be permitted to offer bachelor programs on their own, they can seek approval to offer such programs if no public university or private four-year college is willing to form partnerships.
— The Chronicle of Higher Education
Other universities are offering similar programs. Students at Vanderbilt University, for instance, can now specialize in e-commerce; Carnegie Mellon University offers a one-year program leading to a masters of science in e-commerce; Loyola University in Chicago is in the process of putting together a number of e-commerce related programs; and the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia plans to offer e-commerce courses to businesses as well as students.
The growth of e-commerce specialization programs and courses can be attributed to several factors. Many of the lesser-known business schools have been quick to adopt these programs as a way of differentiating themselves from the bigger schools in the battle to attract students. Polytechnic University now offers an electronic business concentration option in its master of sciences management program. The chair of the department stated that his school wants to focus on e-business over general management to differentiate itself from other business schools that do not offer this track. And the strategy seems to be paying off; enrollments have increased 40 percent over last year.
He also said that traditional business schools and financial companies were caught off guard by the sudden proliferation of e-commerce and have been hesitant to embrace the new trend. Some of the more elite business schools like Harvard and Stanford, for instance, have not introduced e-commerce to their MBA programs. At Harvard, only one of about 50 elective courses is geared towards the Internet.
But while just a few years ago e-commerce was viewed with a great deal of suspicion, it is slowly but surely making its way into the mainstream. MIT recently stated that Fortune 500 companies have started to take it more seriously and want to hire their students who have specialized in e-commerce.
— Financial Times
|
Tuition fees for college have escalated almost 90 percent since 1990, forcing many students in Canada to rely heavily on student loans with which to finance their education. The average debt load per student is now somewhere around $25,000.