26 Januari 2010

Survey Finds More Students Worried about Finances

Family unemployment and a growing student loan burden are making American college students increasingly anxious about finances, according to a national survey by University of California - Los Angeles researchers, writes Larry Gordon for the Los Angeles Times. Nearly 67% of freshmen at four-year colleges and universities said they had at least some concerns about paying their tuition bills, the highest percentage expressing such anxieties in a dozen years, the annual study found. And with unemployment affecting many families, about 53% of freshmen who took part in the survey last autumn said they carried student loans, up about 4% from the previous year and the highest in nine years.
The report, considered the nation's most comprehensive assessment of college student attitudes, found that 4.5% of the students' fathers were unemployed, the largest jobless proportion among fathers since the survey began 44 years ago. Nearly 8% of the respondents' mothers were jobless, the most in 30 years.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0108 24 Januari 2010

More Women Out-earning, Out-learning Husbands

Bringing home the bacon is less and less a man's job in the US these days, writes Nicole Santa Cruz for The Los Angeles Times. According to a Pew Research Center study released on Tuesday, a larger share of men are married to women whose education and income exceed their own. In 1970, 4% of husbands had wives who made more money than they did. In 2007, that share rose to 22%.
"As women have made these extraordinary gains in working and education, men have been able to share in these gains through marriage," said D'Vera Cohn, a senior writer with Pew and a co-author of the study. "With so many women working and achieving higher income, it's increasingly a way for men to achieve economic security."
More on the University World News site
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0108 24 Januari 2010

06 Januari 2010

Winners of the UN Moot Court Contest

Munyaradzi Makoni
Five out of 10 shortlisted universities - two from each of the five United Nations regions - were named winners this month of the first World Human Rights Moot Court held at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The winning universities were from Brazil, Egypt, India, Switzerland and Ukraine.
Mock cases on discrimination, rooted on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and moulded for an international court, were judged in a competition to mark International Human Rights day on 10 December. The Moot Court celebrated the 61st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with law students showcasing how they would fight human rights violations in a court of law.
The African region was won by American University in Cairo, Egypt, which competed against Université de Yaoundé II, International Relations Institute of Cameroon.
The University of Lucerne Law Faculty, Switzerland, beat Germany's Freie University for the Western Europe region. Eastern Europe saw the Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, Ukraine, take first position ahead of Hungary's Debrechen University.
The National Law School of India pipped Gujarat National Law University in the Asia category, while Latin America and the Caribbean produced Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo of Brazil as the winner ahead of Universidad Juarez Del Estado De Durango of Mexico.
UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Judge Navi Pillay, served as the first president of the Moot Court. The judging panel included former South African Chief Justices, Pius Langa and Arthur Chaskalson, advocate Jobi Makinwa, Civil Society coordinator of the UN Global Compact in New York, and George Mugwanya, senior counsel of the International criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Source: University World News, 06 January 2010