Advantages and Disadvantages of Distance Learning

Like any kind of educational program, distance learning comes with a host of pros and cons. Before you enroll in any kind of distance learning program, make sure to carefully consider these in order to be sure you’ll be getting an education that meets your personal needs, strengths and career goals.

Distance Learning Advantages:

• Lots of flexibility. With distance learning courses, students can complete their course work from just about anywhere, provided there’s a computer and internet connection. This allows students to work when and where it is more convenient for them without having to squeeze in scheduled classes to an already busy life.
• No commuting. Taking a course online can be one way to cut down on costly gas or public transportation. Since students can often work from home to complete their class assignments, both time and money are saved in cutting out the trips to and from class.
• Numerous choices for schools. Even if you live in a community with few or no colleges distance learning allows you to choose from a wide variety of schools to complete your education. You may find online schools that specialize in your particular field or one that can provide a great general education. Either way, your options for education will be greatly expanded.
• Lowered costs. Prices for online courses are generally cheaper than their on-campus counterparts and you won’t have to worry about commuting, moving or getting meal plans on campus, some additional benefits to learning from home.
• Learn while working. As distance learning can usually be completed on your own schedule, it is much easier to complete distance learning courses while working than more traditional educational programs. Keeping your job gives you more income, experience and stability while completing your degree giving you less to worry about and more time to focus on your studies.

Distance Learning Disadvantages:

• Lack of social interaction. If the classroom environment is what you love most about learning you may want to take a step back and reconsider distance learning. You’ll likely get some interaction on chat rooms, discussion boards and through email, but the experience will be quite different than traditional courses.
• Format isn’t ideal for all learners. Not everyone is an ideal candidate for online learning. If you know you have problems with motivation, procrastination and needs lots of individual attention from an instructor you may want to think long and hard before enrolling in an online learning program.
• Some employers don’t accept online degrees. While a majority of employers will, there are some who still see a stigma attached to distance learning. Realize that your online degree may not be the ideal tool for some job fields or for future learning.
• Requires adaptability to new technologies. If you’ve never been one to love working with technology you will probably get a lot less out of an online course than your more tech-savvy counterparts. Make sure you feel comfortable working with computers and with online programs before you sign up for a class.
• Not all courses required to complete the degree may be offered online. It makes sense that more practical majors like nursing aren’t offered entirely online, after all, part of the degree is learning to work directly with patients. Find out all the requirements of your degree to see what may need to be completed offline.

Top Distance Learning Schools

	Kaplan University - Associate's, Bachelor's, & Master's Degrees. Kaplan University provides students with the tools and resources to become successful in their educational settings. Kaplan University is an accredited university that offers students affordable online classes.
	University of Phoenix - Associate's, Bachelor's, Master's, & Doctoral Degrees. University of Phoenix is a highly regarded university with classes available online and in a classroom setting. University of Phoenix offers a very diverse class curriculum that prepares the students to become successful employees upon graduation.
	Grand Canyon University - Bachelor's & Master's Degrees. Grand Canyon University stands out as a university offering quality undergraduate and graduate level online courses. An accredited university, Grand Canyon lets students take classes at their own pace and convenience.
	Capella University - Bachelor's, Master's, & Doctoral Degrees. Capella University uses its well respected faculty, vast resources, and educational foundation to educate students to be the brightest in their fields. Capella University is an accredited university with a vast number of degree options.

What are the pros and cons of distance learning courses in Europe?

Have you ever thought of enrolling in distance learning courses? Sometimes you may feel discouraged to come study in Europe because of the bureaucratic procedures you have to go through to obtain, for example, a study visa. Some other times it is the fact that you may not be able to afford your staying in another country what makes you veer away from studying abroad in Europe. No matter what your reason is, the good news is that you can still study in Europe without leaving your home: why not enrolling in distance learning courses?

Benefits of distance learning courses

Many European universities and colleges are now offering education opportunities through distance learning courses as they have quite interesting benefits for students such as:

• Distance learning courses set you free from space and time constraints: you can study wherever your are and whenever you feel more focused to learn as long as you have an Internet connection to access the learning system
• More affordable: this is definitely one of the advantages of enrolling in distance learning courses. You can study from home, compared to having to move abroad
• Large education offer: unlike in the real world, you are limited by the study programs available at the school of your choice. However, you may choose to enroll in distance learning courses at any school in Europe from the convenience of your home
• Support: this is actually one of the features I’ve most appreciated of the distance learning courses I’ve taken. You can conveniently email your teacher and have your questions resolved within a few hours. Or you may also ask a question to the rest of your classmates in the forum or chat room of the learning system
• Distance learning courses promote lifelong learning: indeed, many of those of us who have ever enrolled in a distance learning course do it because we need to increase our knowledge in a specific subject after having finished our degrees. With distance learning courses, you can still keep your life style and work while updating your knowledge without any type of clash

A disadvantage of distance learning courses

While distance learning courses might be an option for many of you, you have to think that not all degrees can be studied through distance learning. You should also think of one disadvantage all distance learning courses share: social isolation. The interaction among students and teachers is done online, which may be a negative side as you may loose one of the most important parts of your life as a student: social interaction with other people.

WHY TEACH ENGLISH?

Whence, and where, and why the English major? The subject is in every mouth—or, at least, is getting kicked around agitatedly in columns and reviews and Op-Ed pieces. The English major is vanishing from our colleges as the Latin prerequisite vanished before it, we’re told, a dying choice bound to a dead subject. The estimable Verlyn Klinkenborg reports in the Times that “At Pomona College (my alma mater) this spring, 16 students graduated with an English major out of a student body of 1,560, a terribly small number,” and from other, similar schools, other, similar numbers. In response, a number of defenses have been mounted, none of them, so far, terribly persuasive even to one rooting for them to persuade. As the bromides roll by and the platitudes chase each other round the page, those in favor of ever more and better English majors feel a bit the way we Jets fans feel, every fall, when our offense trots out on the field: I’m cheering as loud as I can, but let’s be honest—this is not working well. The defenses and apologias come in two kinds: one insisting that English majors make better people, the other that English majors (or at least humanities majors) make for better societies; that, as Christina Paxson, the president of Brown University, just put it in The New Republic, “ there are real, tangible benefits to the humanistic disciplines—to the study of history, literature, art, theater, music, and languages.” Paxson’s piece is essentially the kind of Letter To A Crazy Republican Congressman that university presidents get to write. We need the humanities, she explains patiently, because they may end up giving us other stuff we actually like: “We do not always know the future benefits of what we study and therefore should not rush to reject some forms of research as less deserving than others.” Well, a humanities major may make an obvious contribution to everyone’s welfare. But the truth is that for every broadly humane, technological-minded guy who contributed one new gadget to our prosperity there are six narrow, on-the-spectrum techno-obsessives who contributed twenty. Even Paxson’s insistence that, after 9/11, it was valuable to have experts on Islam around is sadly dubious; it was Bernard Lewis, a leading scholar on the subject, who consulted closely with Dick Cheney before the Iraq War, with the results we know. Nor do humanities specialists, let alone English majors, seem to be particularly humane or thoughtful or open-minded people, as the alternative better-people defense insists. No one was better read than the English upper classes who, a hundred years ago, blundered into the catastrophe of the Great War. (They wrote good poetry about it, the ones who survived anyway.) Victorian factory owners read Dickens, but it didn’t make Victorian factories nicer. (What made them nicer was people who read Dickens and Mill and then petitioned Parliament.) So why have English majors? Well, because many people like books. Most of those like to talk about them after they’ve read them, or while they’re in the middle. Some people like to talk about them so much that they want to spend their lives talking about them to other people who like to listen. Some of us do this all summer on the beach, and others all winter in a classroom. One might call this a natural or inevitable consequence of literacy. And it’s this living, irresistible, permanent interest in reading that supports English departments, and makes sense of English majors. Bill James dealt with this point wonderfully once, in talking about whether baseball is, as so many people within it insist, really a business, and not a sport at all. Well, James pointed out, if the sporting interest in baseball died, baseball would die; but if the business of baseball died—which, given all those empty ringside seats at Yankee Stadium, doesn’t seem impossible—but the sporting interest persisted, baseball would be altered, but it wouldn’t die. It would just reconstitute itself in a different way. And so with English departments: if we closed down every English department in the country, loud, good, expert, or at least hyper-enthusiastic readers would still emerge. One sees this happening already, in the steady pulse of reading groups and books clubs which form, in effect, a kind of archipelago of amateur English departments. The woman with the notebook and the detailed parsing of how each love affair echoes each other in “Swann’s Way” is already an English professor manqué. (Or, rather, a comp-lit professor.) If we abolished English majors tomorrow, Stephen Greenblatt and Stanley Fish and Helen Vendler would not suddenly be freed to use their smarts to start making quantum proton-nuclear reactor cargo transporters, or whatever; they would all migrate someplace where they could still talk Shakespeare and Proust and the rest. Indeed, before there were English professors, there were… English professors. Dr. Johnson was the greatest English professor who ever lived—the great cham of literature, to whom all turned, Harold Bloom plus-plus—and he never had a post, let alone tenure, and his “doctorate” was one of those honorary jobs they give you, after a lifetime of literary labor, for Fine Effort. The best reading and talking about books was, in the past, often done by people who had to make their living doing something else narrowly related: Hazlitt by writing miscellaneous journalism, Sydney Smith by pretending to be a clergyman. So then, the critic Lee Siegel asks, quite pertinently, why don’t we just take books out of the academy, where they don’t belong, and put them back in the living room, where they do? The best answer is a conservative one: institutions don’t always have a good reason for existing, but there are very few institutions that do exist that didn’t get invented for a reason. The space between a practice and a profession is as wide as any social space can be. And what professions do that practices can’t is remain open to what used to be called “the talents.” To have turned the habits of reading and obsessing over books from a practice mostly for those rich enough to have the time to do it into one that welcomes, for a time anyway, anyone who can is momentous. English departments democratize the practice of reading. When they do, they make the books of the past available to all. It’s a simple but potent act. I am, let me add quickly, a living witness to this: my father is the son of a Jewish immigrant butcher and grocer, a wise man but hardly a reader. My father, who loves to read, worked his way through Penn, back when you could, to become… a professor of English, with a specialty in the eighteenth-century wits, Pope and Richardson and Swift and Fielding. Without an English department and an English major, he would never have had a chance to make that journey in so short and successful a time—and, I feel bound to say, the practice of talking about books would have been poorer for it. (Mine would, certainly.) The best way we’ve found to make sure that everyone who loves to talk about books have a place to do it is to have English departments around. The study of English, to be sure, suffers from its own discontents: it isn’t a science, and so the “research” you do is, as my colleague Louis Menand has pointed out, archival futzing aside, not really research. But the best answer I have ever heard from a literature professor for studying literature came from a wise post-structuralist critic. Why was he a professor of literature? “Because I have an obsessive relationship with texts.” You choose a major, or a life, not because you see its purpose, which tends to shimmer out of sight like an oasis, but because you like its objects. A good doctor said to me, not long ago, “You really sort of have to like assholes and ear wax to be a good general practitioner”; you have to really like, or not mind much, intricate and dull and occasionally even dumb arguments about books to study English. The reward is that it remains the one kind of time travel that works, where you make a wish and actually become a musketeer in Paris or a used-car salesman in Pennsylvania. That one knows, of course, that the actuality is “fictional” or artificial doesn’t change its reality. The vicarious pleasure of reading is, by the perverse principle of professions, one that is often banished from official discussion, but it remains the core activity. So: Why should English majors exist? Well, there really are no whys to such things, anymore than there are to why we wear clothes or paint good pictures or live in more than hovels and huts or send flowers to our beloved on their birthday. No sane person proposes or has ever proposed an entirely utilitarian, production-oriented view of human purpose. We cannot merely produce goods and services as efficiently as we can, sell them to each other as cheaply as possible, and die. Some idea of symbolic purpose, of pleasure-seeking rather than rent seeking, of Doing Something Else, is essential to human existence. That’s why we pass out tax breaks to churches, zoning remissions to parks, subsidize new ballparks and point to the density of theatres and galleries as signs of urban life, to be encouraged if at all possible. When a man makes a few billion dollars, he still starts looking around for a museum to build a gallery for or a newspaper to buy. No civilization we think worth studying, or whose relics we think worth visiting, existed without what amounts to an English department—texts that mattered, people who argued about them as if they mattered, and a sense of shame among the wealthy if they couldn’t talk about them, at least a little, too. It’s what we call civilization. Even if we read books and talk about them for four years, and then do something else more obviously remunerative, it won’t be time wasted. We need the humanities not because they will produce shrewder entrepreneurs or kinder C.E.O.s but because, as that first professor said, they help us enjoy life more and endure it better. The reason we need the humanities is because we’re human. That’s enough.

Online Education - Today's Buzzword

Students world over are whole-heartedly accepting online education. The advantages of online education have made it the popular mode of education among the students of all age groups in all parts of the world. This growing popularity of online education has led to the emergence of a large number of educational institutions offering online education for a wide range of subjects. The growth of educational institutions offering relearning facilities has been significantly high in the US, Europe and the developed nations of the world.

Online Education- Changing Perception

In the past people perceived online education as an unserious and unscrupulous way of laying hands of a fast degree and getting good grades without much effort and hard work. People also had doubts about the reputation of education institutes offering online education. However, the times have changes significantly and today the majority of educational institutions offering online education are well established. Most of the world's leading education institutions have commenced online programs, which vindicate the validity of online education. Most of the online courses offer in-depth learning to the students in their respective educational modules.

Factors Contributing To The Growth of Online Education

Online education is becoming popular because most of the educational institutions offering online courses ensure qualitative learning. Talented professors and subject matter experts are at the helm of affairs at almost all accredited universities and colleges offering online courses and online degree programs. The students can be assured of good results in such courses.

Here are some factors that have contributed to the fast paced growth of online education:

· Flexible schedule

The biggest advantage of online education is that the students can do effective utilization of their time, which is the most precious resource. People participating in online education have the freedom of maintaining a flexible schedule, which helps them tremendously and it has come as a boon for the people who are working and want to continue their education.

· Student-Centered Learning

The students in online education have an advantage because they are in charge of their learning experience. The students can prioritize their schedule and complete the assignments as per their comfort levels and convenience. This is possible because the teachers in online mode of education are not teaching you all the time. As an online student, you have the liberty to select the mode of learning.

· Fair Playing Field

Online education is growing in popularity because it offers a level playing field to all the students. When you are learning online, your performance is the only criterion that affects the decision-making and your gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and other considerations do not cloud the decision making process. This is one of the major factors contributing to the growth of online education.

All these advantages of online education may prompt you to join e learning. However, before you take the plunge and enroll in an online course, please make sure that you are familiar with the methodology of online education.

Good Majors for Pre-Med

Good Majors for Pre-Med 

It's not easy to get into medical school, so it's not surprising that hopefuls want to do everything they can to stand out from the crowd. From choosing impressive extracurricular activities to declaring a major, serious contenders need to plan ahead during the early days of their undergraduate studies. While no single major will best prepare you for the study of medicine, considering course requirements and admissions committee advice will help you make an informed choice.

Consider General Admission Requirements

No specific undergraduate major is required to get into medical school, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but broad-based preparation that includes biology, chemistry, math, physics and English courses is recommended. While a background in all of these areas is important, admission requirements published by the Association of American Medical Colleges say that schools require more courses in some areas than in others. Most schools want to see one year of biology, one year of physics, one year of English and two years of organic chemistry on your transcript.

Research Your Dream Schools

While the course recommendations published by the AAMC provide a guideline for required course work, individual medical schools might have requirements different from the general rule. Research the admission requirements at the schools where you apply to make sure your chosen undergraduate major gives you the courses you will need. The Medical School Admission Requirements online tool provides a comprehensive list of medical schools in the United States and Canada, along with links to the schools' admission websites.

Know What's on the MCAT

Most medical schools require that you write the MCAT, a test that assesses your knowledge base for the study of medicine. Before selecting your major, consider what the MCAT covers and ensure that your course of study will give you a foundation in those areas. The Verbal Reasoning section asks you to read, think about and draw conclusions from written passages. The Biological Sciences portion covers molecular biology, microbiology, cell biology, human anatomy and physiology, genetics and evolution. The Physical Sciences section includes a number of topics in both chemistry and physics.

Consider Expert Opinion

Sunny Gibson and Brenda Lee, two members of medical school admissions committees, emphasize that you need more than the right courses and the right grades to make your medical school application stand out. However, they mention that a strong foundation in the sciences with good grades is an important starting point. If you're trying to decide between two majors that both fulfill your prerequisite requirements, choose the one that interests you most. That way, you're more likely to study hard and keep your grades up. Some people believe that majoring in nursing may hurt you in the admissions process. Not necessarily, say Gibson and Lee -- as long as you get all your medical school prerequisites and can explain your choice to admission committees.

Do We Need New Metrics in College Admissions?

The college-admission process is about identifying and attempting to measure human potential. But are we measuring the right things? Do we need new metrics? During a session at the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual conference, in Toronto, on Saturday, I will help weigh those questions, defining “metrics” broadly.

This discussion will be a follow-up to a previous conference session inspired by the confluence of three looks at the changing landscape of higher education—and its potential impact on the college-admissions and college-counseling profession. Those included the College Board Task Force on Admissions in the 21st Century, NACAC’s strategic-planning process, and the publication of Robert J. Sternberg’s book College Admissions for the 21st Century.

My fellow panelists and I will discuss whether we are measuring the right things in three different areas. The first is noncognitive assessment. We have long known that individual success comes from a combination of academic and personal qualities, and that what is most important is intangible. For years my ambition was to develop a standardized test that would measure motivation, leading to guest appearances on Oprah. Unfortunately, I was neither motivated nor smart enough to create such a test, and now my window of opportunity to appear on the talk show has closed.

There has been much discussion of noncognitive traits such as persistence, perseverance, and passion, which have been lumped together as “grit.” Having a better understanding of those factors will be important as the population of students going to college changes in profound ways during the next decade. Institutions such as Oregon State and DePaul Universities have drawn on the work of William E. Sedlacek, a professor emeritus of education at the University of Maryland at College Park, and tried to incorporate noncognitive assessment into their admissions processes.

Last January the Center for Enrollment, Policy, and Practice at the University of Southern California held a conference devoted to noncognitive assessment. One of the featured speakers was Charles Lovelace, executive director of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Morehead-Cain Scholars Program, which has done significant research into the qualities that lead a scholarship recipient to become a difference-maker once on the campus. One interesting finding: Possessing a “growth mind-set,” as described by Carol S. Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, is an important predictor of student engagement.

The second area for discussion is 21st-century skills. Education thought-leaders have argued that today’s college graduates will need creativity, collaboration, empathy, technological savvy, and a global perspective to succeed. How are colleges incorporating those skills into their curricula and into their admissions processes? Several years ago at a counselor’s breakfast with admissions officers from Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Penn, and Georgetown, I asked what discussion about 21st-century skills was taking place on their campuses and in their offices. The answer was “none.”

There are exceptions, of course. Lee Coffin, dean of undergraduate admissions at Tufts University, has added a series of application essays to measure creativity and other skills, augmenting the information provided by traditional measures such as high-school grades and SAT scores. Tufts was also a pioneer in allowing students to submit videos as part of the application package. Lee’s distinction between data and voice in the selective admissions process is both enlightening and profound.

The final arena for asking whether we are measuring the right things involves gauges of institutional quality. Why are admissions statistics such as application numbers, admission rate, and yield considered measures of quality? It’s easy to criticize U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, but college presidents and boards, as well as bond-rating agencies, are just as guilty of treating institutional popularity as an indicator of quality. Admissions statistics may be easy to measure, but they are also easy to manipulate, as evidenced by the epidemic of good institutions that recently admitted to having misrepresented their admissions statistics.

The focus on input measures is partly because it is difficult to measure output, but ranking “America’s Best Colleges” without measuring the educational experience is like ranking “America’s Best Churches” without any concern for spiritual growth. The Gen X parent is going to demand data and evidence to show educational value, and we can expect federal and state governments to pressure colleges to develop metrics that measure outcomes or added value (gainful employment) from a college education. Tools like the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the National Survey of Student Engagement are good starts.

The question “Are we measuring the right things?” suggests broader philosophical questions. What constitutes merit? How do we distinguish between merit and privilege? Do we measure what we value, or do we value what is easy to measure?

Do we really need a University of The Bahamas?

My last letter to the editor was in response to a junkanoo related item from the Budget Presentation which generated useful dialogue. This letter has also arisen from the Budget with respect to the Government’s allocation of funds to take the College of The Bahamas (COB) to University status. There has been a lot of talk about this initiative over the past several years, and the public has been subjected to bursts of information every now and then as the specially formed COB University Task Force carries out its mandate.

Although I might well be in the minority position on this issue, I would like to publicly state that I totally disagree with this initiative because, in a nutshell:

We do not need a University; and
We simply cannot afford it.
WHY?  Why do we need to have a University of The Bahamas? Are we ashamed because we “just have a College”? There is no shame in realizing that we can’t afford a University. The reason we have so many financial problems now is because ‘we too big eye just for show’!

Why are we trying to reinvent the wheel? We are a small country – we do not need our own University when the University of the West Indies is right across the water, already established and respected (and if I am not mistaken, already significantly funded by the Bahamian Government). In addition, COB has already developed excellent relationships with respected universities all around the world who are providing accreditation through their programmes. Why not continue to develop these relationships and tailor them to our needs?

WHERE? Where is this university campus going to be located? The present site is certainly not suitable since a university needs a lot of space in itself as well as significant additional space for expansion.

HOW? A university requires an unending source of revenue and funding in order to operate and sustain itself. How will we pay for and administer the development of this type of institution with its huge infrastructure of buildings, equipment, supplies, furniture, labs, classrooms, libraries, housing, computers, electricity, water, maintenance, landscaping, cleaning and the list goes on and on. We cannot even keep COB running efficiently and effectively on its present inadequate budget (not to mention trying to register several thousand students every semester without long waits and all sorts of confusion!) so how will we create a university which requires a budget which is so much greater, many times over? Where is the logic in that?

Do we want to take on this government building project (like the new stadium, or the new courts, or the many other buildings around the country that on the one hand are poorly built at enormous expense and lots of opening fanfare, whilst on the other hand they have no proper contract management or maintenance plans so that they fall quickly into disrepair and money pours down the drain?) As an aside on this topic, I would like to make note of the deplorable state of the Portia Smith Building at COB, which is a disgrace. Her name should be removed. Have we no shame? How can we put the name of this academic hero (my former classmate) on such a ‘broke down’ building? This demonstrates a total lack of respect for her legacy!

WHO? Who is going to staff the university? Where will the money come from to pay the huge salaries needed in order to attract the highly qualified faculty members and administrative staff? Also, who is going to attend the University – will it cater to Bahamian students from all over The Bahamas, or is the plan to attract more foreign students, or both? If so, where are they going to be housed? Add dormitories to that list above…and don’t forget food and other ancillary services. What will be the fee scale for persons attending the university, since students are struggling now to meet the meager fee scales presently set at COB?

Looming over this topic of university status however, is the more pressing issue of the alarming state of public education in the country. Our educational system is in crisis. This is a serious problem which needs to be fixed first. Why are we concentrating on expanding tertiary education when the basic primary structure is broken, i.e. the baby jus’ born and can’t even sit up straight yet, more less creep, and we already got the hurdles set up in the yard – you have to learn to creep before you can leap! We are putting the cart before the horse if we are attempting to develop a university when the majority of our high school students leave school not being able to read, write and compute properly – isn’t something drastically wrong with that equation?

Instead of spending money on a University of The Bahamas – why not channel financial resources and planning into tackling the many deficiencies inherent in the country’s primary, junior and high school system? The entire country is suffering. As Patricia Glinton Meicholas so aptly states in her address at this year’s Dr Keva Bethel Lecture Series:

Above all, let us begin the change process in education at the beginning—the primary level. Here iswhere the best of the best should be assigned—the best and most caring administrators and classroom practitioners…. Lessons must be rich in the challenge of extrapolation, application, analysis, evaluation and creation of new knowledge. Given the increasing disaffection of Bahamian youth, it is as urgent to concentrate on the development of the affective domain of learning, which targets awareness and growth in attitudes,emotion, feelings, peaceful interaction with others and conflict resolution.

To assist students presently in the school system, there needs to be significant investment in remedial teaching programmes in order to bring struggling students up to standard. Funds need to be allocated to train and hire these specialized teachers, and I dare say that we have enough students in the present system to dedicate an entire school to remedial training (in fact, I think COB offers remedial courses themselves).

In addition, the present COB educational degree curriculum should be reexamined so that teacher training is more stringent and specialized – we need many more properly trained teachers in english, mathematics and science. The educational system, indeed the whole country, needs to strive for excellence as its benchmark, not mediocrity.

In my day as a student:

Teachers were one of the most highly respected professionals in the country;
Teaching was an honourable, and one of the most important professions and they were paid accordingly;
We might not have had fancy classrooms (in fact many lessons were taught under the shade of the school trees in the yard) but the teachers were highly trained and we learned our lessons;
Education was a privilege that was not taken for granted – it was a way of improving your lot in life. If nothing else, you left school being able to read, write and do ‘rithmetic;
If you misbehaved you ‘felt’ it – corporal punishment was meted out with regularity and without question;
Parents were an integral part of the school community;
Being able to afford and attend THE Government High School (whose last location was on the present COB campus) was a privilege. The school was established to provide education for those students who showed academic promise. Contrary to what some might think, GHS was not elitist, it was sensible – we need to bring this type of institution back.
I know that many younger people sigh when they hear their elders use the term “in my day” but we need to appreciate the valuable lessons from our past in order to lay the path of our future.

What contributed to the downward spiral of educational importance in the country? I think that economic concerns overshadowed educational ones when the impact of the tourism boom in the country’s post independence years ushered in employment opportunities that were based largely in the service industry where persons could make fast money as opposed to having to use their ‘book learning’ skills. Close on the heels of this boom came the scourge of the drug trade era which provided even faster money and an unprecedented quest for greater materialism. Sadly during this time, many students when asked what they wanted to be, stated without hesitation: “drug dealer” - and the importance of obtaining a solid education diminished (as Dr Offff bemoaned in the words of his popular Get Involved song “Don’ be no fool, stay in school!”)

In this 40th year of Independence we cannot ignore the natural results of progress – it is what it is. However, we do need to be cognizant of how and why the balance shifts. We must dig deep and search hard and fast to put our country back on a proper educational level. There is a lot of serious work to be done ‘in the first beginning’ and to my common sense way of thinking, trying to move COB to University status is not a priority!

The World's Best Architecture Schools

The World's Best Architecture Universities and Architectural Programs.

Our 'Top 10' World's best Architecture Universities / Schools (Edition 2012).

1.		Southern California Institute of Architecture, SCI-Arc (Los Angeles, California, USA) - A truly amazing architecture institute that provides a great opportunity to develope yourself as a well rounded architect. SCI-Arc is the leader in sustainable design and one of the best institutes for computational design. Additionally, and perhaps for many students most importantly, it is NAAB accredited which will be a requirement if you want to become a licensed architect in the United States (with some exceptions, California being one of them).		6.		Technical University Delft(Delft, the Netherlands) - is among the very best in the world for both architecture and engineering. With World renowned faculty and several amazing programs to choose from. We have not featured Delft in the past few years after a disaster had struck when a faulty coffee machine caused the school to burn to the ground. The future of the school was uncertain and students were placed in large tents. The Dutch government made it its priority to rebuild as quick as possible, recently completing the new school which is better than ever.
2.		Architectural Association, AA(London, England) - Remains one of our top favorite architecture school in the world as it demonstrates being a world leader in so many fields of architecture. Notably the best architecture firms around the world have a tendency to pick up these students as soon as they are finished. This is eventually one of the most important aspects of choosing a school, one with which will quickly set you up with a good job, therefore being a very good return on investment.		7.		ETH Zurich, DARCH (Zurich, Switzerland) - Is one of the best universities for architecture in Europe. It is notable how many of today's great architects have graduated from this university, including Pritzker Prize winning architects Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron, the very well known Santiago Calatrava, the prominent Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage and many more. The down side is that there are limited spaces available and very competitive, so a placement cannot be guaranteed.
3.		Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT(Massachusetts, USA) - This institute has always been a leader in engineering and today is very involved with all facets of architectural teaching. What is remarkable about MIT is how involved they are with architecture, it is almost impossible to find an aspect of architecture that MIT is not involved with. This will spark your passion as an architect and keep you driven to succeed. Despite the relatively high cost (which unfortunately is very high throughout the United States), we believe it is a great investment.		8.		Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, IaaC(Barcelona, Spain) - Another great architecture institute with a constantly increasing amount of programs including a recently added 'Master in Advanced Interaction' which will be available as of next term. Their Master in Advanced Architecture features, among others, a course in sustainability and self-sufficient design, which can be followed as a one or two year course. This incredible institute is found in one of the most beautiful and culturally rich cities in the world, the majestic city of Barcelona.
4.		The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (Copenhagen, Denmark) - Another great University we highly recommend. The Danish have demonstrated a great understanding on 'new' architecture and are becoming the forerunners of the modern world. They teach several programs in English at a cost of €5000 per semester for non-EU students (far less or potentially free with government subsidies for EU students).		9.		The Glasgow School of Art(Glasgow, Scotland) - Designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a former student and world renowned architect. This schools is definitely one to look at to further deepen your artistic architecture skills. The GSA is the only independant art school in Schotland and one of very few in the UK. The Glasgow school of art offers various undergraduate and graduate degree studies which are among the worlds finest.
5.		University of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan) - The Japanese are leaders in cultural design with a rich heritage in architecture. Not only are they among the world leaders in architectural design but in engineering as well. The University of Tokyo has proven to be among the elite universities in the world and a testimony to that is Tokyo itself, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, is not only a beautiful city but held strong during on of the largest earthquakes in history. University of Tokyo have an impressive list of alumni, including Toyo Ito and Arata Isozaki.		10.		American University of Sharjah- Due to popular vote we have dedicated a place on the top 10 list to the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The students of this university have demonstrated a tremendous amount of enthousiasm in voting for their university. For us this is one of the key factors in choosing a 'best' school, not only the program that it has (which is phenominal at this university, with recognized NAAB accreditation) but also how students react to their education and their level of satisfaction.

*As in previous years our ranking system is based on several factors including job potential / marketability, student satisfaction, cost of attendance as well as subject matter (including sustainable design and generative / algorithmic architecture). This list is based on what the best schools would be for the average student wanting to study architecture and what will give them the best chances at success. You do not need us to tell you how great Harvard, Princeton or Yale are, you also do not need us to tell you that this most likely will not be a realistic choice for most students. What we have provided is a list of universities that far exceed expectations, that will prepare you for the real world and that will not but you deep into debt.

Hobbies You Should Take Up In College/University

Many experts will recommend finding a hobby to keep you occupied in between cleaning up, studying and socialising. It’s important for you to develop the art of being able to keep yourself occupied, especially without needing people to keep you fulfilled. Hobbies are a great way to release your stress and spend your time productively to develop your self.

Getting into college/university can be an overwhelming experience. Suddenly, you’re bogged down with many things to study, and you will also be exposing yourself to new faces, clubs, activities and many more. However, once you get past this initial introduction to university, your life will calm down and sooner or later, you’ll start having a lot of extra time to spend. You will soon get bored, and while living on a budget, hitting the cinemas, bowling centres, outdoor activities and going on vacations will suddenly seem like a bad idea because of the high costs.

So what can you do?

Actually, there are many different hobbies that you can take up at very low cost (if you need to pay for anything at all). Here are some ideas for cheap hobbies that you can, and should, take up while in college/university:

1 – Reading

It’s not a myth that people can read as a hobby, and not just to score the high grades. Chances are, your university will have a library that offers a lot of reading materials to choose from – newspapers, magazines, journals, and a wide assortment of both fiction and non-fiction books. Reading is free if you go to the library, and it’s a great way to spend some solitary time alone to enjoy your company. Plus it will definitely improve your language skills!

2 – Writing

Writing comes in many different shapes and forms. You can write stories, articles, blog posts, poems, lyrics – writing is a great way to express yourself, and it has been proven to be a great way to release tension and stress caused by studying. If you join an online community, or start to gather many followers on your blog, writing can be a fulfilling experience to express your thoughts and emotions.

3 – Photography

Today, chances are, you probably own more than one camera. What with your smartphone and digital camera, it’s more than enough for you to take up photography as a hobby. Photography is more than simply directing your lenses and clicking. There are tips and techniques to take beautiful pictures, and the good news is that these techniques can be learned for free, online and in photography books and magazines. If you are able to take good enough pictures, this can also be a way to generate some side-income, especially if you can get some commissions to take pictures. There are also some websites that allow you to sell your pictures as stock photos which you can use.

4 – Arts and Craft

If you’re looking for something to kill time, arts and craft is one of the best ways to do this. From knitting, to paper mache, to painting, scrapbooking, drawing, quilting and many more, diving into arts and craft is a great way to get in touch with your creative side and express yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re not particularly artistic – this is a great way to release yourself and be free. Who knows, you may also be able to sell your work!

5 – Walking/Hiking/Cycling

A great way to enjoy yourself outdoors at cheap prices is to go walking, hiking or cycling. Usually, this can be done at very minimal cost (if there’s any cost involved at all). Find out some of the best places near your university and go and take a walk. Enjoy the scenery. Looking at the green scenery will mentally soothe you, and it’s a great way to take a break from the stress of your studies. While you’re at it, you can also involve yourself in watching birds or insects, which can also be another hobby.

6 – Music

There are some who could spend hours just immersing themselves in their favourite music, and you can make this your hobby, too. Music is known to be able to connect to your soul emotionally, which is great if you want to relax or take a break. You can also take up a class to learn an instrument. There should be free clubs you can join in university, or you can pay for your classes if you can afford the fees.

7 – Foreign Language

Learning a foreign language can be a great hobby, especially if you have friends who are doing the same. Plus, it’ll definitely look good on your resume if you have mastered a foreign language. 8 – Volunteering If you open your eyes and pay closer attention to the unfortunate people around you, you’d probably find that there are a lot of volunteer jobs out there. If you want to contribute back to society productively in the extra time you have, this will definitely be a fulfilling option to take. Plus, volunteering will equip you with some great skills and experience!

8 – Sports

Last but not least, you can take up a sport as a new hobby. Outdoor sports will keep you fit and healthy and refreshed, while indoor sports can give you the mental stimulation you might need. Either way, taking up sports is always a great way to keep you fit and healthy and it can also kill your time well.

Of course, there are many options to choose from when taking up a new hobby, and many of them are cheap or do not require any money. So take up a new hobby today, and transform yourself with new skills and experience!

Do you have any particular hobby that you enjoy doing? Share them with us!

Student Scholarships in Nigeria

At the university level, students interested in scholarships have to work hard to get at least a second class upper. The different kinds of student scholarships in Nigeria include:

Government funded scholarships and bursaries: The Federal Government of Nigeria awards Scholarships to outstanding students. Some state governments also award scholarships and bursaries to their indigenes of their states.

Scholarships by Oil Companies:Some oil companies like Chevron, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas award scholarships to outstanding students.

• Mobil Scholarships: Mobil offers scholarships to undergraduates and postgraduate students in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. They usually focus on the Engineering and Sciences sectors. 
• Agip Oil Scholarships: Most of these awards are given to students in the Sciences department. Special attention is given to students from the oil-producing states.

Scholarships by Individuals: Some individuals offer scholarships to indigent students in Nigerian universities. An example is the Late Gani Fawehinmi Scholarship for indigent students. Information for this kind of scholarship is usually available in the newspapers and on websites.

Scholarships from Organisations:Companies that see education as a form of Corporate Social Responsibility may provide scholarships to students. MTN Foundation is an example. Here’s a link to the scholarship award.

International Scholarships:Some institutions offer international students different kinds of scholarships depending on the course of study. However, some organizations offer scholarships to students with outstanding records. They include:

The Chevening Scholarship Programme is a prestigious awards scheme that funds international postgraduate students who want to study in the UK for one academic year. Funded by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and administered by the British Council.

Requirements for the Chevening Scholarship

• Postgraduate student with proven academic success and in chosen career
• Between two and five years working experience with an excellent track record and potential to use the skills gained during your scholarship to make a difference in your country.
• Must be 21 years and above
• Must be a resident in your country when you apply and provide your birth certificate
• Good English language skills (most UK Higher Education institutions require a minimum IELTS of 6.5 for admission into postgraduate courses).

More information on the British Council Website.

The Overseas Scholarship Scheme (OSS) was established in 2001 by thePetroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), which is a branch of the Nigerian Government's Ministry of Petroleum Resources. The purpose of the OSS is to award scholarships to top Nigerian Graduates to travel overseas in order to study postgraduate courses in areas relevant to the Oil, Gas and Solid Minerals industry.

Commonwealth Scholarships are usually publicised via daily newspapers, electronic media, the Nigerian Television Authority, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, all Nigerian Universities and all Sate Scholarship Boards in Nigeria.

Fulbright Scholars Programme:
The Fulbright Foreign Student Program brings citizens of other countries to the United States for Master’s degree or Ph.D. study at U.S. universities or other appropriate institutions.

Scholarships and Bursaries by Nigerian UniversitiesSome Nigerian universities offer bursaries and scholarships to their students every year.

You only need to ask at the Division of Students Affairs in your university.

University of Lagos Students for instance can visit this site for more information.