Higher Education Quick Takes

David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University, was named Monday as the next secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Skorton, president of Cornell since 2006, will leave the university in 2015. At Cornell, he has helped raise more than $5 billion. Under Skorton, Cornell and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology won a competition to develop a teachnology-oriented graduate school in New York City.

A new article in Educational Researcher develops a typology for government-sponsored international scholarship programs. The lead author, the University of Pennsylvania’s Laura W. Perna, and her co-authors identify 183 government-sponsored programs in 196 countries and find that 76 percent of these programs target graduate or post-graduate (rather than undergraduate) study, 78 percent focus on degree attainment rather than short-term exchange, and 85 percent limit the number of possible destination countries. Just 15 percent of programs allow scholarship recipients to pursue any field of study they wish. Thirty-eight percent of programs cover all expenses, and 59 percent require students to return to their home countries after completing their programs.

The authors divide programs into four main types, based on program characteristics (such as level of study, undergraduate or graduate) and the political and economic dynamics of the sponsoring nations: Type 1, “development of basic skills"; Type 2, “development of advanced knowledge in developing nations"; Type 3, “development of advanced knowledge in developed nations"; and Type 4, “promotion of short-term study abroad."

A report released Friday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified a need for greater oversight of the optional practical training program (OPT), which allows international students to stay in the U.S. and work for between 12 to 29 months after completion of their programs. The report found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, does not maintain complete records on which international students are actively working and whether they are working in their fields of study, as required by ICE regulations. A GAO analysis of more than 126,000 records of students participating in OPT found that 38 percent did not include an employer’s name. GAO also found that the records did not contain the dates on which students began working.

"Collecting and monitoring complete information on foreign students approved for OPT would better position ICE to determine whether these students are maintaining legal status in the United States," the report says.

The Homeland Security department concurred with all of the GAO's recommendations, which can be found on page 31 of the report.

In today’s Academic Minute, Russell Poldrack, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses his findings of a 14-month study he conducted on his own brain. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.