UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, June 8, 1994
5
New requirements tighten for education applicants
By Jamie Munn Kansan staff writer
Kansan staff writer
New requirements for the KU education administration programs are the exception to the state's rules, according to one KU administrator.
higher standardized test scores and grade-point average requirements, set last fall by the Board of Regents will affect KU's education applicants for the first time this summer, said Dave Shulenburger, vice chancellor for academic affairs.
Shulenburger said he wasn't sure how many students would be affect ed when applying for the school's master's, doctorate and specialist degrees.
"This is unusual," Shulenburger I said. "This is the only degree program in the state with these kinds of 'requirements.'"
Shulenburger said he thought the new requirements should have conformed more with the standards for other degree programs.
One problem with the new standards was the minimum require-
Hammond-Paludan also said that the task force's findings were consistent with a nation-wide wave of recent criticism of administrative education programs.
"It was a study of the programs for quality versus quantity," Hammond- Paludan said.
Hammond-Paludan said the education program's requirements first came under review in 1990, when Wichita State University had applied to offer a doctoral degree in education administration.
Martine Hammond-Paludan, the Regents' director for academic affairs, said all six of the Regents' institutions offer doctorate programs in education administration. Only three schools, KU, Kansas State University and Wichita State University, offer master's and specialist degrees.
Later a Regents' task force conducted an additional review which lead to the decision to revise the admission standards, she said.
When one university asks to initiate a program, the same existing degrees in the Regents' institutions are
Many critics claimed that large numbers of unqualified students were being accepted to increase tuition revenues. But these graduates are finding few job opportunities, Hammond-Paludan said.
reviewed by outside consultants, she said.
"From that, the program's focus moved on to higher quality and to limit the number of students enrolling," she said.
The alternative admission requirements will be presented to the Regents at their next meeting June 29-30. Shulenburger said.
ments for standardized tests, he said. "What we need is a combination of measures." Shulenburger said.
Professor to advise Russians
Factors such as race could affect test scores, he said. The school should always have the opportunity to review letters of recommendation and the student's GPA to ultimately determine their acceptance, he said.
Shulenburger said KU would be working to provide some alternative requirements to the new standards.
By Geraldo Samor Special to the Kansan
Mohamed El-Hodiri, professor of Russian and East European Studies and co-director of the Institute of Public Policy and Business Research, will be the chief economist in a team to advise the Duma, the Russian Parliament, on fiscal and economic restructuring.
El-Hodiri traveled to Moscow in May to meet his Russian counterparts for the first time. He will go there again in early August to square the details of the cooperation.
"If I think our efforts will make a difference, then I'll go for one semester each year during three years," he said. El-Hodiri is scheduled to teach economics at the University this fall.
his work.
He said that although a great part of his job would be looking into Russian statistics, they might not be useful to
"But that philosophy has to guide the technical," he said.
El-Hodiri said that accountability was the cornerstone of the changes Russia needs to undergo.
"Whatever you do, you should be able to justify it," he said. "You have to pay for your mistakes and be rewarded for the good things you do."
Maria Carlson, director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies, said that El-Hodiri was qualified to work with the Russian government.
"Unlike many economists and business school professors, he is fluent in Russian and has considerable in-country experience," Carlson said. "He will be able to make coherent and rational recommendations."
"We'll have to depend on interviewing with people who have their hands on the pulse of that economy," he said.
"Statistics are meaningless," El-Hodiri said. "The structure of their economy is changing so fast that the past is almost muted about the future."
He said that a lot of philosophy backed his approach to helping the Russians.
This is not the first time El-Hodiri has advised a foreign government. In 1973, he advised the Sudanese on transportation, and, in 1878, he helped a university in Saudi Arabia set up a business school. El-Hodiri also advised colleagues in his native Egypt where he was an economic adviser under the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the late 1960s.
El-Hodiri said the Russians had never had professional research in the social sciences and that without it, realistic decisions could not be made.
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