The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has received a $200,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a series of workshops and internships for teachers of writing and foreign languages from the state’s public secondary schools.
The university will conduct summer workshops during the next three years for the teachers and will create academic-year internships to bring North Carolina’s best teachers in those fields to the campus. The interns will teach basic freshman courses while pursuing advanced studies and taking part in seminars on teaching methodology with faculty members.
The programs should “foster the professional development of teachers,” improve school-college articulation, and help faculty members “understand the problems confronted by teachers in the public schools,” said Christopher C. Fordham 3rd, the university’s chancellor.
A report on the health of the nation’s master’s and doctoral programs, presented last month to the Congress and President Reagan, points out numerous “signs of trouble and erosion” in graduate education and research.
“Unless our graduate schools receive the support they require, they will not by the year 2000 be able to respond effectively to the nation’s imperatives and expectations,” the report says.
The report identifies several problem areas, including an inadequate number of new doctoral-level scholars in fields such as science, engineering, and computer science. It also cites the under-representation of women and minorities, especially in the physical sciences and engineering and the difficulty of maintaining a first-rate graduate enterprise with second- and third-rate equipment and facilities. Also pointed to were reductions in federal support for students at a time when tuition increases have been dramatic.
The report--which includes a proposed 10-part federal initiative to remedy the problems--was submitted by the National Commission on Student Financial Assistance’s graduate-education subcommittee, which is chaired by John Brademas, president of New York University.
The number of foreign students attending U.S. colleges and universities increased by 3.3 percent this year, from 326,299 in 1982 to 336,985, according to the annual survey of foreign enrollment conducted by the Institute of International Education in New York City.
The modest enrollment increases come as bad news to those higher-education officials who have counted on foreign enrollments to offset losses caused by the decline in the numbers of high-school graduates.
Foreign students make up 2.7 percent of the total U.S. higher-education enrollment, according to the institute. In the 1970’s, their numbers grew by 10 to 16 percent per year. That growth rate has been slowed by the worldwide economic recession and stricter admissions requirements, said Richard Krasno, the institute’s president.--sr
