A preview of the 2011-2012 Common Application uploaded last week showed a series of alterations to its standardized form, including the return of a maximum word count on the essay portion of the application, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The limit will now be set at 250 to 500 words. The updated version also incorporate a new option for the marital status of the parents of the applicant to include "civil union/domestic partners," according to The Chronicle. Applicants must also indicate details of their language proficiency by checking categories of "speak," "read," "first language" or "spoken at home." The Common Application's board members considered adding a question about the applicant's sexual orientation, but decided not to implement it in the 2011-2012 version. The Common Applications will soon introduce a "mobile web platform" so students can register, search for colleges and check their application statuses on their phones, The Chronicle reported.
Alan M. Garber will succeed Steven Hyman as provost of Harvard University beginning September 2011, according to The Harvard Crimson. Garber, currently a medicine and economics professor at Stanford University, graduated summa cum laude from Harvard as an economics major in 1976 and later received his PhD in economics from Harvard and an MD from Stanford, according to The Crimson. Garber said in an interview with The Crimson that he plans to strengthen interdisciplinary ties between different schools and departments and that he is excited to participate in developing a Harvard campus in Allston, Mass. Although his is primarily in the sciences and social sciences, Garber said he will work to emphasize Harvard's humanities and arts curricula. Hyman will step down at the end of this academic year to focus his attention on his research, The Crimson reported.
The 2011 budget passed by Congress is projected to reduce federal funding for foreign language and area studies programs by up to $50 million, according to Inside Higher Ed. If funding disappeared, programs which emphasize strategically important or rarely studied languages will struggle to survive, Inside Higher Ed reported. The cuts, voted on by legislators on Thursday, represent a change from previous years in which foreign language education was given high levels of bipartisan funding following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which demonstrated a need for experts on Middle Eastern languages and cultures. The increasing debt ceiling and the 2012 budget makes international-education advocates uncertain that the budget proposal from President Barack Obama will maintain its current level funding for Title VI programs, according to Inside Higher Ed.
