Colleges & Universities

As a large number of students are making the decision to study Arabic, American colleges and universities are trying to meet this demand by supplying the students with proficient professors. In one case, Hussein Elkhafaifi, an assistant professor and director of the University of Washington's Arabic language program, had to turn 150 would-be Arabic students away due to the lack of chairs. "This is a major challenge for us because there is no correlation between the increased enrollment, which is now up about 127 percent, to the number of teachers who are trained", said Elkhafaifi.

There is intense debate going on in higher-education as the federal agency in charge of evaluating college accreditors begins their evaluation process. College accreditors measure the success of educational institutions. The evaluation of them takes place as the Bush administration is pushing for colleges and universities to do more to demonstrate how well they help students learn.

The U.S Education Department is continuing its probe into the student-loan practices at American colleges and universities. Despite the success of the earlier investigation, the department has identified 55 colleges that received a second round of letters concerning the investigation "My best guess is that the department is still in an information-gathering phase", said Mark Kantrowitz publisher of FinAid, a Web site that provides student-aid advice.