Student Union
Fulbrights Score with Support from Colleges, Universities
The U.S. Department of State has released the names of scholars who have been selected for the coveted Fulbright Scholarships, with an emphasis on the colleges and universities that produced the most successful applicants.
“When I received my letter, I was in the car with my friend, and I screamed for probably a full minute,” said Amanda Cronin, a senior at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who was notified on February 25 that she would be placed in an English teaching program in Argentina next March.
The COVID-19 pandemic has stalled the popular visiting program as Fulbright scholars are prevented from traveling without restrictions. This year, Fulbright published a list of colleges and universities which lent intense support and advice to students while they compile the considerable documentation and time required to apply to the Fulbright program.
The scholarships are awarded to young professionals in the U.S. with a bachelor’s degree and to faculty, administrators, or researchers of U.S. institutions to participate in education and cultural exchanges around the world.
For international students, researchers and young professionals, the program brings about 4,000 Fulbright Foreign Students and Visiting Scholars to the United States from more than 160 countries worldwide each year to study, lecture, conduct research, or teach their native language in U.S. institutions of higher education, according to its website.
This year’s top research institutions that award doctoral degrees are Georgetown University in District of Columbia (39 scholars), Brown University in Rhode Island (38), Harvard University in Massachusetts (35), Princeton University in New Jersey (34), Yale University in Connecticut (32), University of Chicago in Illinois (31), New York University in New York City (29), University of Notre Dame in Indiana (29), Columbia University in New York City (28), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in Michigan (28).
This year’s top 10 Fulbright producing institutions that award bachelor’s degrees are Bowdoin College in Maine (24 scholars), Smith College in Massachusetts (16), Middlebury College in Vermont (15), Oberlin College in Ohio (14), Amherst College in Massachusetts (13), Davidson College in North Carolina (13), Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania (11), Macalester College in Minnesota (11), Williams College in Massachusetts (11) and Bate College in Maine (10).
“These experiences often lay the foundation for Fulbright and other postgraduate research proposals,” said Janice Jaffe, acting director of student fellowships and research at Bowdoin College in Maine. Students apply each year to engage in independent faculty-mentored research, she told VOA.
Margaret Lamb, the director of fellowships and postgraduate scholarships at Smith College in Massachusetts said many students at the college come from abroad and that the school’s study abroad program is robust.
“Our students see themselves as activists, change makers, and scholars,” Lamb said.
Smith College has a program named Smith’s Fulbright Fast Track, with goals of connecting faculty and staff with students and helping them design their proposals. Students can choose a host country, an English teaching assistantship or research project, and planning curriculum and study abroad projects with guidance from faculty and staff and to improve their proposals.
“The fact that so many in our community — faculty, advisers, alumnae, and peers — are familiar with Fulbright [Program] helps get candidates started on defining a personal Fulbright project and in gathering the support to prepare an application that meets the requirements of the program with rigor, creativity, and confidence,” Lamb told VOA in an email response.
The U.S. Department of State and the Institute of International Education (IIE), an exchange program, have been working with Fulbright Commissions and U.S. embassies around the world to assess when the Fulbright Scholars Program can resume.
Resumption of travel for the program will depend on travel warnings from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and the State Department, the ability of participants to obtain visas, flight availability, the operating status of foreign host institutions, administrative resources at U.S. embassies, and the availability of local facilities to protect public health, the Fulbright Scholars website stated in October 2020.
If in-person exchanges are not possible, 2020-2021 Fulbright scholars may defer their start dates. However, once a host country has been approved for an in-person exchange, Fulbright finalists do not have the option for country re-assignments, nor can they extend beyond the year they are awarded.
For finalists that withdraw from the cycle, they will be considered a Fulbright alumni and may re-apply for future Fulbright cycles, according to the Fulbright website.
Rene Cordero is a 2020 Fulbrighter who was planning to write his dissertation about student political movements during the 1960s and 1970s in the Dominican Republic during the authoritarian regime of Joaquin Balaguer. He planned to do research in the country’s government agency, Archivo General de la Nación (General Archive of the Nation). However, Cordero’s research was impacted due to the pandemic.
“I have had to alter some of the structure of my dissertation” said Cordero, a graduate student at Brown University in Rhode Island. “It has also hindered the oral history aspects of my research.”
Allison Cheung, another 2019 Fulbright Scholar, was conducting research on the accuracy of diagnostic tests in new diseases at the University of Melbourne when the pandemic halted travel last year. She remained in Australia to continue her research, postponing her plans to attend medical school in the U.S.
“I was worried that if I stayed here [in Australia], I wouldn’t be able to go back to the U.S. in time to start medical school,” said Cheung in a video interview on the Fulbright YouTube channel. “But then I realized that this is an opportunity that I’ll probably only have once in my career, to work directly in a global pandemic.”
As a new Fulbrighter, Cronin said she understands how the pandemic has taken a toll on students who anticipated travel. “I do feel really awful for those students who weren't able to travel after working so hard,” she said in a video interview with VOA. “Because I know how intense the application processes and I mean, we're all feeling the effects of this pandemic. But this one is tough, because it is seemingly a combination of your accomplishments, and then you can’t follow through on it and demonstrate that you have the ability.”
However, Cronin remains optimistic about the future. “I don't mind at all if it is a delayed start date. Just having the award is a huge honor and [an] accomplishment in itself,” she said. “A year from now, we will hopefully be in a better place as a country here [ the U.S.]. And as a world, in general, because vaccine distribution has been increasing across the board.”
See all News Updates of the Day
American Academy of the Arts College announces closure
The American Academy of Art College in Chicago announced it would be closing after 101 years of preparing students for careers in art and illustration.
WTTW news reported that like other art colleges, the academy saw enrollment drop after the pandemic, and officials made the decision to close the college last month. (July 2024)
5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
Police open hazing investigation after Dartmouth student found dead
Police have opened a hazing investigation after a Dartmouth College student was found dead in a river in early July.
Police received a tip that hazing was involved, and there was evidence that alcohol might have been involved in the death, USA Today reported. (July 2024)
Americans' confidence in higher education falls, poll shows
Confidence in higher education among Americans is declining, according to a recent poll that found 36% of adults expressed a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education, down from 57% in 2015.
The Gallup and the Lumina Foundation poll also revealed that more than two-thirds (68%) of adults feel the U.S. higher education system is heading in the “wrong direction” vs. 31% of those respondents saying it is going in the “right direction.”
The poll, conducted June 3-23, surveyed 1,005 Americans aged 18 and older.
Declining enrollment mirrors concerns voiced by some Americans about colleges focusing on political agendas, neglecting relevant skills and being overly expensive.
Nathan Wyand, a software engineer in Charlottesville, Virginia, told VOA News he chose not to attend college due to high costs and the challenging curriculum.
“The mode of learning was very stressful. Every month and a half, I would break down in tears,” Wyand said, adding, “I didn’t want to deal with the debt and lack of freedom in choosing what to learn.”
Post-high school, Wyand said he explored different jobs before pursuing software development through a 10-month data science bootcamp at Flatiron School in New York.
“I took online courses at Flatiron, learning about software development. In my current role, I have practical experience, though less theoretical knowledge than peers with computer science degrees,” Wyand noted.
Wyand valued freedom in learning over being told what to learn in a structured classroom.
“I didn't want other people to tell me what I was going to learn, I was tired of that and ready to take charge of my education,” he said.
While costs influenced Wyand’s decision against college, he advises against dismissing it solely due to expenses.
“Don’t avoid college because you’re lazy or because it’s expensive. Avoid college if you feel that there is something better or more interesting to you that you can pursue instead. It’s important to have an objective,” he said.
The survey conducted last month reaffirms that 36% of adults maintain strong confidence in higher education, unchanged from the previous year.
“At a time where the U.S. needs more skilled Americans to fulfill our labor market needs of today and tomorrow it is concerning to see that they are losing confidence that higher education can deliver what they need,” Courtney Brown, vice president at Lumina, an education nonprofit, told VOA News.
Researchers are concerned by fewer Americans expressing “some” confidence and more reporting of “very little” or “none.”
“This year’s findings show a notable increase in those with little to no confidence, now at 32%, compared to 10% in 2015. This trend is alarming and must be reversed,” Brown said.
Brown stressed the need to address concerns about perceived political influences and lack of relevant skills in higher education.
“Society must tackle college costs directly. Many find college unaffordable, leading to crippling debt. I do believe higher ed can transform and ensure it meets the needs of students, but to do so we must pay attention to these data and address these concerns head on – the stakes of not doing so are far too great for individuals, communities and our nation,” Brown added.
John Pollock, a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago, told VOA he agrees with the poll’s findings.
“College is a business, not a guarantee for jobs or debt repayment. Many our age see multiple paths to success,” Pollock said. He added that networking opportunities are one value that colleges offer.
Of the roughly one-third of Americans who expressed a “great deal/quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, 27% said it is important for individuals and society to be educated.
Of the roughly one-third of Americans who said their confidence in higher education was “very little/none,” 41% cited colleges as being “too liberal,” or trying to “indoctrinate” or “brainwash” students as reasons for their replies.
Overall, 68% of respondents believe higher education is on the wrong track, contrasting with 31% who see it heading in the right direction.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
Report: US could have 2.8M international students in 10 years
The United States, which currently has 1,057,188 students from 210 countries, could have 2.8 million students by 2034, according to a report in India’s Free Press Journal.
The report says India is likely to make a significant contribution to the increase, along with China, Vietnam, Nigeria and Bangladesh. (June 2024)
