Money and education
Money and education
Money and the quality of education are today's hot issues,
with some people saying that quality does not come free or cheap.
Others say the quality of a product does not always depend on
the amount of money one has to fork out for it.
In fact, a number of leading state universities, especially
the University of Indonesia (UI) and the Bandung Institute of
Technology (ITB), have decided to provide a special channel for
the admission of students who could afford to pay higher tuition
fees.
This means that it does not matter whether or not a student
meets the qualifications required by the state universities. So
long as he or she has the money to pay the fees, he or she will
have a place in the state universities.
The university is a place for the development of human
resources, a place where quality people are developed.
Thus, there is no excuse for any university to mortgage its
standards for money.
The pragmatic reason that the special channel is only for
financially able students, is by no means acceptable.
As far as quality is concerned, there should be no distinction
between rich and poor students, because if leading state
universities follow the trend to mortgage their standards for
money, it would be the end of the noble objective of education
itself.
In this light, the special channel can be called a misleading
path.
Nobody wants institutes of higher learning, such as UI, ITB,
the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) and Gadjah Mada
University in Yogyakarta, to compromise the high quality of
education in the country. -- Media Indonesia, Jakarta
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Otherop-mosquito
Mosquito Time
JP/6/
Mosquito Time
Humans -- especially metropolitan humans -- like to think of
themselves as living at the top of the food chain. But this is
the season when it becomes clear that we're really at the top of
the menu. It's mosquito time again. And while the food available
to mosquitoes -- us -- hasn't expanded much in the past year,
their habitat certainly has, thanks to a June of record rainfall.
Every outdoor receptacle, natural or unnatural, that could
possibly contain water now actually does. Anything that holds
water for the few days needed to incubate mosquito eggs is doing
so. The Northeast is a giant mosquito nursery. All those billions
and billions of larvae, hanging head down in still water, are
just beginning to metamorphose into pupae and adults. We, in
turn, are just beginning to itch.
The ancestral fears of yellow fever and malaria have faded
away, thanks to vigilant mosquito control. They've been replaced
by fears of West Nile virus, spread by mosquitoes that bite
birds, and of Eastern equine encephalitis. These diseases remind
us that humans aren't the only creatures mosquitoes find
delectable. Out in the country, most people fear ticks more than
they fear mosquitoes and not only because of the threat of Lyme
disease. A tick seems somehow like an extremely slow mosquito.
Most of us can't actually see a female mosquito distend herself
as she draws in our blood, but a tick makes it plainly visible.
We can only be thankful that ticks don't fly. The reason they
don't is obvious. That evolutionary niche is already full of
mosquitoes. How full, only the summer will tell.
-- The New York Times