HENRY T. YANG, a prominent engineer, is one of a half- dozen American academics and entrepreneurs who sit on an international panel that advises Singapore’s government on its higher-education and research efforts. At its last meeting, the group reviewed plans for a new public university, the country’s fourth.
Back at home, where Mr. Yang has been chancellor of the University of California at Santa Barbara since 1994, the situation is one of contraction, not expansion. Facing the deepest state-budget cuts in decades, public-university officials in California have slashed salaries, furloughed employees, and reduced enrollments.
“our faculty, staff, and students are deeply concerned about the survival of the University of California as a world-renowned institution,” Mr. Yang told a meeting of the university’s regents in July.
GIUlIo SArChIolA, ConTrASTo, rEDUx
Students work at terminals in a state-of-the-art library at Tsinghua U. in Beijing. China is plowing money into top universities while also establishing vocational programs and enabling more students to go to college.
Asian universities O on the rise: a comparison of enrollment, spending, and research with colleges in the United States: A26
China hopes O to build outstanding universities by attracting top scientists and giving them free rein to build programs: A27
South Korea plans O to train scientists for industry and academe by backing a $220-million nanotech research center: A28
In Singapore, O a partnership with MIT is part of a drive to reposition the city-state as a center for knowledge and innovation: A29
SHANGHAI ACROSS EAST ASIA, govern- ments are funneling resources into elite universities, financing basic research, and expanding access to vocational and junior colleges, all with the goal of driving economic development.
hong Kong and Singapore, compact port cities that have lost their traditional importance as logistics and manufacturing centers, are rushing to turn themselves into centers of innovation.
China has invested in a group of select universities that it hopes will become globally renowned hubs of technological and scientific research, while in South Korea, leaders are spending billions of dollars on projects designed to spawn topnotch laboratories and attract foreign universities as partners. And as Taiwan’s economy loses ground to China, it is trying to draw top talent through aggressive international recruitment.
At Transfer Time in California,
Thousands of Students Hit a Dead End
BY JOSH KELLER
ONE OF the most produc- tive pipelines in Cali- fornia higher education starts with six community colleges spread among the quiet, space-age suburbs of Silicon Valley. Every year the colleges send thousands of their students to the region’s public university, San Jose State.
The community colleges here are a prime source of high-quality students, supplying nearly a third of the graduates at San Jose State, the oldest campus in the California State University system. For generations of local two-year students looking to transfer to a university, San Jose State has been both a top prize and an obvious choice.
AlISon YIn For ThE ChronIClE
BY BEN TERRIS
WHEN Cheryl J. Wachen- heim, an associate pro- fessor of agribusiness and applied economics at north Dakota State University, says she taught her courses last year from a remote location, she means a desert nearly 7,000 miles away from her Fargo campus.
A captain in the Minnesota Army national Guard, Ms. Wachenheim deployed to Balad, Iraq, just north of Baghdad, in August 2008, for a 10-and-a-half-month stay. She continued teaching courses in micro-and macroeconomics online, from a fortified trailer crammed with medical supplies, body armor, the M-16 rifle she was required to carry wherever she went, and a computer.
online courses have long been a boon for soldiers who want to participate in college despite geographic displacement. It’s usually a student, however, and not the professor, working from the far-flung location.
During her tour of duty, which included training at Fort Sill, in oklahoma, in June and July, she taught four courses that enrolled 20 to 75 students—two in the summer of 2008, one in the fall of 2008, and one in the spring of 2009.
To get Internet access, she and nine other soldiers on her base in Iraq chipped in for a satellite dish and dug holes in the sand all over the base so they could run wires underground and into each of their trailers.
Ms. Wachenheim served as a med-ical-logistics officer of the 834th Aviation Support Battalion of Task Force 34. She worked out of Joint Base Balad, one of the largest American military bases in Iraq, dubbed “ Mortaritaville” because of its location in the line of fire. Ms. Wachenheim says that when she walked around the base after hours, C-rAM (counter rocket, artillery, and mortar) weapons would light up the night sky.
Continued on Page A11
This week’s news briefing: Page A3 l The Chronicle Review: Section B l 391 job opportunities: Page A44
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