Kharbarhub.com, a news site from Nepal, walks international students through the process of getting a U.S. student visa in this article. It includes information about applying and interviewing for a visa. Read the full story here. (October 2023) …
Leave a commentAs colleges become battlegrounds for U.S. politics, and face declining enrollments, educators are worried that they have lost the American public’s trust. One way to fix this might be to expand access to online degrees. Michael D. Smith, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, argues that academics should embrace digitization as a means of saving the institutions they work for. Read his take in the Chronicle of Higher Education. (October 2023) …
Leave a commentStudent activists in the U.S. have long championed both the Israeli and Palestinian causes. Amid the war between Israel and Hamas, many students report feeling threatened for their opinions. Activists claim to have been doxed (when your identity is unwillingly leaked to the public) and threatened online. Douglas Belkin and Melissa Korn speak to students affected for the Wall Street Journal. (October 2023) …
Leave a commentKatalina Karikó won the award for helping pioneer mRNA technology, which was used to develop the COVID-19 vaccine. Before that, she fled authoritarian Hungary, failed to earn tenure and toiled as an underpaid research assistant for years, with few taking her ideas seriously. Yet she never gave up on her research. In this op-ed for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dr. Priya E. Mammen insists that Karikó’s accomplishment is “nothing short of heroic.” …
Leave a commentStudents can expect to pay $40,000 to $80,000 per academic year to attend a four-year American college or university, but there are ways to drastically reduce costs if you are an international student set on studying in the U.S. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has more. Camera: Adam Greenbaum, Saqib Ul Islam …
Leave a commentSonoma State University, a public institution in California, is offering guaranteed admission to any high school student who meets the minimum academic standards. In doing so, it joins university systems like the State University of New York, which sent 125,000 automatic acceptance letters last year. The scheme could expand access to education by reaching students who otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t apply. Universities benefit, too, by admitting more students as the number of applications drops nationwide. Jessica Dickler has more for CNBC. (October 2023) …
Leave a commentRepublicans, whose party infighting has paralyzed the U.S. House of Representatives for three weeks, will begin again on Monday to try to pick a new speaker to lead the chamber and address funding needs for Israel, Ukraine and the federal government. Factional strife between right-wing hardliners and more mainstream Republicans led to the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Oct. 3 and derailed leadership bids by two would-be successors: No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise and prominent conservative Jim Jordan. The leadership vacuum has stymied congressional action as it faces a Nov. 17 deadline to avoid a government shutdownmore
Leave a commentAll About America explores American culture, politics, trends, history, ideals and places of interest. Hispanics are now the largest population group in Texas, surpassing non-Hispanic white residents who have outnumbered other racial groups in the state since at least 1850. The switch likely happened in late 2021 but was not officially confirmed until the U.S. Census released official population numbers in June 2023. The numbers show that Hispanics have been the state’s largest population group at least since July 2022. Texas officials were expecting the change. “A significant proportion of that was being driven by more births than deaths,” saysmore
Leave a commentWith three months to go before the Iowa caucuses that he has staked his campaign on, former Vice President Mike Pence faces mounting debt and lagging poll numbers that are forcing questions about not only whether he will qualify for the next debate, but whether it makes sense for him to remain in the race until then. Pence ended September with just $1.18 million left in his campaign account, a strikingly low number for a presidential contest and far less than his rivals, new filings show. His campaign also has $621,000 in debt — more than half the cash hemore
Leave a commentLawyer Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty to a felony Friday just as jury selection was getting underway in his trial on charges accusing him of participating in efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election in Georgia. Chesebro, who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law, pleaded guilty to one felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents in a last-minute deal. His plea came a day after fellow attorney Sidney Powell, who had been scheduled to go to trial alongside him, entered her own guilty plea to six misdemeanor counts. Inmore
Leave a commentRussia’s efforts to discredit and undermine democratic elections appears to be expanding rapidly, according to newly declassified intelligence, spurred on by what the Kremlin sees as its success in disrupting the past two U.S. presidential elections. The U.S. intelligence findings, shared in a diplomatic cable sent to more than 100 countries and obtained by VOA, are based on a review of Russian information operations between January 2020 and December 2022 that found Moscow “engaged in a concerted effort … to undermine public confidence in at least 11 elections across nine democracies.” The review also found what the cable describes asmore
Leave a commentPart of competitive collegiate admissions is crafting a compelling narrative about yourself, and part of sales is telling a story about your product and why it matters. Businesses and graduate schools are turning to professional storytellers to help. Marlena Corcoran has some of their insights in Forbes. (October 2023) …
Leave a commentThe Israel-Hamas war has animated students on college campuses across the United States. As young people voice their opinions, there are questions of safety, free speech rights and even future job prospects. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports from New York …
Leave a commentRefusing to give up, Representative Jim Jordan told Republican colleagues on Thursday that he was still running to be speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives — leaving Republicans few viable options after his backers resisted a plan to expand the temporary speaker’s powers to reopen the House. The combative Ohio congressman delivered the message at a fiery closed-door meeting at the Capitol as the Republican majority considered an extraordinary plan to give the speaker pro tempore more powers for the next several months to bring the House back into session and conduct crucial business, according to Republicans familiar withmore
Leave a commentAndrew Raupp, a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) educator, contends that STEM degrees prioritize cramming facts over the thoughtful, questioning Socratic method once common in the humanities. Read the op-ed in Newsweek. (October 2023) …
Leave a commentU.S. President Joe Biden is set to address the nation Thursday night and discuss the U.S. response to the recent Hamas attack on Israel as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine. Biden visited Israel Wednesday, bringing a message of support to Israelis while also working to secure humanitarian aid for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. announced $100 million in aid for Gaza and the West Bank, and the Biden administration is expected to propose $100 billion in supplemental assistance for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and security along the U.S.-Mexico border. “My administration was in close touch with the leadershipmore
Leave a commentThe group that successfully won a landmark college affirmative action lawsuit earlier this year is suing to end raced-based admissions at the United States Military Acadamy at West Point. According to a report from CNN, the conservative group Students for Fair Admissions is asking that the academy be prohibited from considering or knowing an applicant’s race during the admissions process. (September 2023). …
Leave a commentA TVC News Nigeria report says that about 14,000 Nigerian students are currently studying in the United States, and more would like to join them. But they need information about schools and the proper processes to follow. (September 2023) …
Leave a commentJanhavi Munde, a student from India, writes about her experiences going through international student orientation at Wesleyan University in the U.S. state of Connecticut. “We were all away from home, we were all converting kilometers to miles on a daily basis, and we would all make jokes about American food and deportation as our go-to,” she writes. Read the entire piece here. …
Leave a commentAttorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, has won the Louisiana governor’s race, holding off a crowded field of candidates. The win is a major victory for the GOP as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Landry will replace current Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek reelection due to consecutive term limits. Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the Deep South. “Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech Saturday night. “It’s a wake up call and it’s amore
Leave a commentThe Teen Mag takes a look at the application process at U.S. colleges and universities, specifically the Common App. The Common App lets students apply to many universities at once via a common application. Writer Charu Yadav examines the process from an international student’s point of view. Read the article here. …
Leave a commentWith the highest number of international students since the start of the pandemic, one U.S. university is conducting a program to help foreign students feel more at home. Kent State University in Ohio hosts Conversation Partners, which pairs international students with students from the U.S. Yui Kaichi, writing for Kent Wired, explains how the program is helping students make new friends and learn more about the world. (September 2023) …
Leave a commentOn the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington this summer, a few Black queer advocates spoke passionately before the main program about the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. As some of them got up to speak, the crowd was still noticeably small. Hope Giselle, a speaker who is Black and trans, said she felt the event’s programming echoed the historical marginalization and erasure of Black queer activists in the Civil Rights Movement. However, she was buoyed by the fact that prominent speakers drew attention to recent efforts to turn back the clock on LGBTQ+ rights, like the attacks onmore
Leave a commentRepublicans nominated conservative Representative Jim Jordan by a vote of 124-81 Friday in a chaotic third day of attempting to elect a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. As VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, Jordan needs substantially more support to win a full floor vote next week to become the person who will be second in the presidential line of succession. …
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