A survey of nearly 500 leaders at colleges and universities reflects other reports that found American higher education is facing challenges on many fronts.

School officials were asked to name the biggest issues their institutions would face in the next three to five years and how they would deal with them. The study was a joint effort with the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Huron Consulting Group, and was released in October.

The study identified the top six issues that the 500 leaders listed. The most common concern? Increasing competition with other educational institutions. About 62% of those questioned noted that concern.

The next most common issue? The increase in non-traditional students, meaning students who fall outside the typical 18 and 24 years olds who enter school each year. The growth of non-traditional students – mostly adults with full-time jobs — were cited by 39% of leaders.

Two other concerns were shrinking state and federal financial support, and decreasing public trust in higher education. Officials said they were worried about political conditions around the world, too, and their effect on international students coming to the United States.

But the college and university officials said they have answers. In fact, 89% expressed confidence in their school’s ability to meet the needs of the growing number of students who are working adults.

Peter Stokes says colleges and universities have always been dealing with change. Stokes is the managing director for higher education with Huron.

After World War II, when the U.S. experience a sharp jump in the U.S. birth rate — known as the Baby Boom — more young people enrolled in college. Then, after the Great Recession in 2008, the birth rate dropped. Around that time, the number of working adults starting or returning to college or university began to rise.

The traditional student population will likely recover eventually, Stoke says. Until then, schools will have to adapt and increase internet-based and short-term programs to meet the needs of students who have less time and money to spend.

As for the five other issues identified in the study, only seven leaders polled felt very confident in their school’s ability to find solutions.

Louis Soares is the chief learning officer at the American Council on Education. He says that in recent years, Americans have come to think of higher education as more of a means of getting a well-paying job than as a public benefit.

This may not be surprising given the increased cost of higher education. But Soares said that this put many educational institutions in competition with one another to prove how their programs can results in better jobs.

At the same time, U.S-based companies like Amazon and Google are creating their own educational programs to compete with traditional degree programs. And countries like France, Canada and Australia are becoming more appealing to international students who would have likely looked to U.S. schools in the past.

As a result, some colleges and universities across the country have been closing. The U.S. Department of Education reports that in 2018 the number of institutions nationwide dropped to its lowest level since 1998.

Soares suggests that schools have a better chance of surviving if they work together, as Georgia Tech has, sharing new program ideas and methods with 50 other institutions. But that is not always easy.

“U.S. higher education is innovative, but the innovation tends to be small-scale,” he said.

Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, says it is important to focus on public trust and governmental support of higher education.

Pasquerella says U.S. higher education has failed to promote its own importance to society. Many people have come to think of colleges and universities as places where students waste time learning unnecessary subjects or hearing one-sided beliefs.

She says colleges and universities educate future business and political leaders who shape policies that improve conditions in  communities and the nation. Major scientific and technological developments usually emerge from a college or university laboratory.

“Demonstrating the ways in which … their success is inextricably linked to the physical, emotional, economic well-being of people in the communities in which they’re located and which they seek to serve … is a first and critical step in helping to restore public confidence in higher education,” said Pasquerella.

She added that as Americans better appreciate the contributions and impact of colleges and universities, funding from state and federal governments will likely increase to previous levels.

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A typhoon struck the Philippines on Tuesday bringing heavy rains and prompting preemptive halts in air travel, schools and government offices, with some 200,000 people evacuated after warnings of floods and landslides.

Typhoon Kammuri, the 20th typhoon to hit the country this year, weakened slightly and moved slowly across central parts of the archipelago during the night, with damage minor reported in some areas.

The storm was packing 155 kph (96 mph) wind speeds and gusts of up to 235 kph (146 mph), the weather bureau said. Authorities warned of landslides, storm surges and floods triggered by heavy winds and rain, preemptively moving 200,000 people to safe places in several dozen provinces.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or significant damage.

The main airport in Manila would be closed for 12 hours from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. as a precaution, although air travel continued in unaffected areas of the country.

Government offices and schools were closed in affected areas and utilities firms appealed for patience ahead of anticipated power outages. The coastguard halted commercial sea travel in affected areas.

Local television showed footage of the main airport in Legazpi province with cables, lighting and panels hanging from the ceiling. Pictures posted by social media users showed waves crashing against bulwarks, felled trees and signage, and some minor damage to electricity poles.

The Philippines is hosting the Southeast Asian Games and organizers postponed several events, including the surfing, kayak, windsurfing, sailing and canoe contests.

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U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper urged Turkey on Monday to stop holding up support for a NATO defense plan for the Baltics and Poland, as Ankara presses the alliance to support its fight against U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG militia in Syria.

In an interview with Reuters ahead of the NATO summit, Esper warned Ankara that “not everybody sees the threats that they see” and added he would not support labeling the YPG as terrorists to break the impasse.

He called on Ankara to focus on the larger challenges facing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“The message to Turkey … is we need to move forward on these response plans and it can’t be held up by their own particular concerns,” Esper said as he flew to London.

“Alliance unity, alliance readiness, means that you focus on the bigger issues — the bigger issue being the readiness of the (NATO) alliance. And not everybody’s willing to sign up to their agenda. Not everybody sees the threats that they see.”

NATO envoys need formal approval by all 29 members for the plan to improve the defense of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia against any threat from neighboring Russia.

The dispute, as NATO prepares to hold its 70th anniversary summit, is a sign of deep divisions between Ankara and Washington over everything from the war in Syria to Turkey’s growing defense relationship with Russia.

Turkey wants NATO to formally recognize the YPG militia, the main component of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as terrorists and is infuriated that its allies have given the militia support.

Ankara has blamed Washington for the current impasse, saying it was caused by the U.S. withdrawal of support from a separate defense plan for Turkey, covering any possible attack from the south where it borders Syria.

Asked whether Washington might agree to branding the YPG as terrorists in order to break the deadlock, Esper said: “I wouldn’t support that.”

“We’re going to stick to our positions, and I think NATO will as well,” Esper said.

The issue is the latest source of friction between the NATO allies, which have also been at loggerheads over Turkey’s purchase of advanced Russian air defenses, which Washington says are incompatible with NATO defenses and pose a threat to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter jets.

Washington said in July it was removing Turkey from the F-35 program and has warned of possible U.S. sanctions.

Two U.S. senators pressed the Trump administration on Monday to impose sanctions on Turkey over its purchase of the Russian missile defense system and said the failure to do so sent a “terrible signal.”

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London Bridge reopened to cars and pedestrians Monday, three days after a man previously convicted of terrorism offenses stabbed two people to death and injured three others before being shot dead by police.
                   
Political leaders including Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who have traded blame for the security failures that allowed the attack ,attended a vigil at Guildhall Yard in the medieval heart of London to remember the victims and honor members of the emergency services and bystanders who fought the attacker with fists, fire extinguishers and even a narwhal tusk.
                   
The dignitaries, city officials and members of the public observed two minutes of silence in honor of former University of Cambridge students Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25. They were fatally stabbed by 28-year-old convicted terrorist Usman Khan during an event designed to connect graduate students with prisoners. Both victims worked for the Cambridge-based prisoner rehabilitation program Learning Together.
                   
Two of the three injured people remained in hospital Monday. The third was discharged.
                   
The attacker was attending the event at Fishmongers’ Hall, beside the bridge, and had returned for the afternoon session when he started stabbing people. Police believe he acted alone.
                   
He was pursued onto London Bridge and restrained by staff from the venue and others attending the conference. Police opened fire after he flashed what looked like a suicide vest. It was a fake device.
                   
Toby Williamson, chief executive of Fishmongers’ Hall, paid tribute to staff at the venue who tried to help the injured and fight off the attacker. Williamson said one staffer, whom he identified as Lukasz, pulled a 5-foot (1.5 meter) narwhal tusk from the wall and charged at Khan, allowing others to escape. Williamson told the BBC that Lukasz suffered cuts in a minute of “one-on-one straight combat” with the knifeman.
                   
London Mayor Sadiq Khan told Monday’s vigil that, in the face of tragedy, people should “take hope from the heroism of ordinary Londoners and emergency services who ran toward danger, risking their lives to help people they didn’t even know.”
                   
The attack has pushed security to the top of the agenda in campaigning for the U.K.’s Dec. 12 election.
                   
Johnson, a Conservative, has blamed legal changes made by a previous Labour government for the fact that Khan was freed from prison a year ago after serving half of a 16-year sentence for terrorist offenses, without parole officers assessing whether he still posed a risk.
                   
That rule was changed in 2012 by a Conservative-led government, and Johnson has vowed to end the early release of violent offenders altogether.
                   
Opposition parties blamed years of cuts to the prison and probation services by the Conservatives, who have been in power since 2010. Khan was on probation, subject to restrictions on his movement and wearing an electronic tag when he launched his attack.
                   
“There are enormous questions to be learned from this terrible event that happened last week and that is, what happened in the prison with this particular individual, what assessment was made of his psychological condition before he was released and also what supervision and monitoring he was under after coming out?” said Corbyn.
                   
The family of Merritt also cautioned against knee-jerk responses. They said he “would not want this terrible, isolated incident to be used as a pretext by the government for introducing even more draconian sentences on prisoners, or for detaining people in prison for longer than necessary.”
                   
In the wake of the attack, authorities are urgently reviewing the release of more than 70 other former terrorist prisoners.
                   
As part of that work, a 34-year-old man was arrested Saturday in Stoke-on-Trent, central England, on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts. Police said Monday he had been returned to prison for breaching his release conditions.

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United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of a “point of no return” in climate change as a result of inadequate efforts to stop it. The U.N. chief spoke in Madrid on Sunday ahead of a 10-day climate conference attended by 25,000 people from around the world. Spain has offered to host the event on short notice after Chile withdrew due to political turmoil there. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

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A trade deal between the U.S. and China has stalled because of newly signed U.S. bipartisan legislation supporting pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, according to the news website Axios.

The news site quotes a source close to U.S. President Donald Trump’s negotiating team as saying the trade talks were “now stalled” because of the legislation, and time was needed to allow Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “domestic politics to calm.”

China is also taking other steps to retaliate against what it sees as U.S. support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.  

The Chinese foreign ministry said Monday it is slapping sanctions on U.S.-based non-governmental organizations that have acted “badly” during the recent protests in Hong Kong. NGOs affected by the sanctions include Human Rights Watch, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Freedom House.

China also announced Monday that it “has decided to suspend reviewing the applications for U.S. warships to go to Hong Kong for (rest and) recuperation as of today.”

A foreign spokeswoman said, “China urges the United States to correct its mistakes, stop any deeds and acts of interference in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs.”

In another development, Reuters reports that hundreds of Hong Kong office workers came together during their lunch break Monday, the first in a week of lunchtime protests to show their support for pro-democracy politicians who were handed a resounding victory in district polls last week.

Protests erupted in Hong Kong in June over the local government’s plans to allow some criminal suspects to be extradited to the Chinese mainland.

Hong Kong officials withdrew the bill in September, but the street protests have continued, with the demonstrators fearing Beijing is preparing to water down Hong Kong’s democracy and autonomy nearly 30 years before the former British colony’s “special status” expires.

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A group of U.S.-based scientists is rushing to document indigenous sites along Puerto Rico’s coast dating back a couple of thousand years before rising sea levels linked to climate change destroy a large chunk of the island’s heritage that is still being discovered.

Scientists hope to use the 3D images they’ve taken so far to also help identify which historic sites are most vulnerable to hurricanes, erosion and other dangers before it’s too late to save the island’s patrimony.

“It’s literally being washed away,” said Falko Kuester, director of the Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, which is involved in the project. “A big part of what we’re working on is to make the invisible visible and make sure it stays in our memory.”

Also involved in the project are UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Para la Naturaleza, a nonprofit environmental group based in Puerto Rico.

The first site scientists targeted was a large swath along the U.S. territory’s north coast that includes a ceremonial center used by the Taino Indians roughly 2,000 years ago, said Isabel Rivera Collazo, an environmental archaeologist at UCSD who is overseeing the project that began in August 2017.

Scientists discovered what appears to be a large settlement just east of the ceremonial site thanks to drones and technology including 3D images, she said. They were also able to determine the shape of the ceremonial site, she added.

Armed with that information, scientists used excavations to determine that one of six plazas previously discovered appears to have been used for ceremonial dances and the veneration of ancestors.

“The inside of the plaza was intensively trampled,” Rivera said.

The Tainos populated various Caribbean islands but were eventually wiped out after the arrival of Christopher Columbus and European settlers.

“Up to today, there is still a lot we don’t know about indigenous culture along our coasts,” Rivera said. “It’s not in our history books.”

“The entire coast is blanketed with archaeological sites,” she said. “We want to recover that information before it disappears.”

Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural Resources has said the sea level around the island is rising by more than 3 millimeters – a little over a tenth of an inch – per year. But climate change has more immediately dramatic effects as well, destroying habitats, eroding coastlines and causing more powerful storm surges when hurricanes hit.

Some scientists say that warmer temperatures increase the frequency and intensity of storms. Puerto Rico is exposed to storms every year for six months during the Atlantic hurricane season, and the scientists noted that the storm surge from Hurricane Maria washed away part of the region they’re studying.

“It’s literally in the eye of the storm quite regularly,” Kuester said of the island.

Eric Lo, an engineer with the UCSD’s cultural heritage initiative, flew to Puerto Rico in August 2017 to launch the project a month before Maria hit the island as a Category 4 hurricane. Lo was surprised at what he saw upon his return to the U.S. territory months later.

“Pieces of land where I had stood and flown the drone didn’t exist anymore,” he said. “They were underwater.”

Scientists are now trying to determine the extent of coastal erosion in that region and the hurricane’s impact on the archaeological site they are studying.

Three-dimensional models based on drone images are being used to measure distances, areas, volumes and explore fine details: “You start asking these details that historically you couldn’t,” Kuester said.

The engineering initiative that he oversees has helped explore other historic sites elsewhere, including an underwater cave with prehistoric fossils and a baptistery in Florence, Italy.

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New Orleans police say 11 people were wounded in a shooting early Sunday on the edge of the city’s famed French Quarter.

A police news release said two people were in critical condition. No arrests were announced by midday Sunday.

Police Supt. Shaun Ferguson told The New Orleans Advocate/The Times-Picayune that a person of interest has been detained, but it was not immediately clear whether the person had any connection to the shooting.

Police said 10 people were taken to two hospitals and another walked in. Further details haven’t been released.

The shooting happened about 3:20 a.m. on a busy commercial block of Canal Street that has streetcar tracks and is near many hotels.

Ferguson said police quickly responded to the scene as patrols were heightened for this weekend’s Bayou Classic, the annual Thanksgiving weekend rivalry football game between Grambling State and Southern University at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Kenneth Culbreth told The New Orleans Advocate/The Times-Picayune that he had gone into a CVS pharmacy in the early morning hours to make a quick purchase. Moments later, he walked out to a crime scene.
 “On my way out of the CVS, I heard pops,” Culbreth said. “It was so many, I couldn’t keep count.”

Culbreth spent the rest of the morning watching the scene, with law enforcement and several emergency vehicles moving in and out at a rapid pace.

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A passenger bus plunged off a bridge onto a frozen river in Siberia on Sunday, killing 19 of the more than 40 people on board, authorities said.

A tire on the bus burst as it was crossing the bridge over the Kuenga river in eastern Siberia’s Zabaikalsky region.

The vehicle, which was traveling from Sretensk to Chita and carried 40 passengers, skidded off the road and onto the ice.

“Nineteen people died and 21 received various injuries,” the office of the governor of the Zabaikalsky region said in a statement.

Two preschool-aged children were reportedly among the dead.

National television broadcast footage of the mangled wreckage of the bus, which lay upside down on the snow-covered ice surrounded by ambulances and fire engines.

Nineteen people including a 12-year-old girl were hospitalized.

More than 70 people and two helicopters with medics were involved in the rescue operation, officials said.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told his deputy Tatyana Golikova to do everything to help the families of the victims, the government said.

“The head of government expressed condolences to the families of those who died,” the government said in a statement.

The Investigative Committee, which probes serious incidents, said it had opened a criminal inquiry into a possible violation of traffic safety rules.

The head of the powerful Investigative Committee, which reports directly to President Vladimir Putin, demanded a “detailed investigation” into the deadly accident.

Officials said the driver — who died in the crash — had years of experience.

Local authorities launched a crowd-funding campaign to help the victims and their families.

Road accidents are common in Russia, often due to alcohol, the poor state of roads and failure to observe traffic rules.

However, the number of road deaths has gone down in recent years, to around 20,000 per year.

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Israel has announced a plan for a new Jewish settlement in the West Bank city of Hebron, which is holy to both Jews and Muslims and is a longtime flashpoint for violence. Palestinian officials condemned the move.

Israel’s new defense minister Nafatali Bennet announced his approval for a new Jewish neighborhood in Hebron, where about 1000 Jews live surrounded by 200,000 Palestinians. He said the settlement, which will be built near the city’s old market, will double the number of Jewish settlers in Hebron. He also said it will create “territorial continuity” between an existing Jewish neighborhood and the holy site of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which Muslims call the Ibrahimi mosque.

The announcement said that the market’s buildings will be demolished and replaced with new stores. It said Palestinians who own ground floor shops will receive the new shops.

Jewish hardliners welcomed the move. The Jewish Committee of Hebron called it an act of historic justice, saying the market has been under Jewish ownership since the early 19th century.

But Palestinians sharply condemned the Israeli decision. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat blamed the US for the move, saying it was quote “the first tangible result of the US decision to legitimize colonization.”

He was referring to a statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are not illegal according to international law. That is a major change in US policy, but has been rejected by much of the international community.
 
“The statements of Secretary Pompeo, as far as we’re concerned, is null and void. It’s an absolute departure of the Trump administration from the squares of international law. And once you depart from the squares of international law you open the squares of chaos, terrorism, extremism, violence and corruption,” said Erekat.
 
Hebron has long been a focus for clashes between Israelis and Palestinians. In 1994, an American-born Jewish settler opened fire inside the mosque killing 29 Palestinians. In 1929, Palestinians killed more than 60 Jews in Hebron.

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President Donald Trump is heading to London this week to attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Leaders Meeting. Forged at the start of the Cold War, NATO is celebrating its 70th anniversary and the summit is designed to affirm the strength of the alliance. But European leaders are bracing for Trump ahead of the meeting as they continue to question Washington’s commitment to NATO. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report from London.

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Greece’s prime minister says he will ask other NATO members at the alliance’s London summit to support Greece in the face of fellow member Turkey’s attempts to encroach on Greek sovereignty, notably last week’s agreement with Libya delimiting maritime borders in the Mediterranean.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis told the ruling conservative New Democracy party’s congress Sunday that the alliance cannot remain indifferent when one of its members blatantly violates international law and that a neutral approach is to the detriment of Greece, which has never sought to ratchet up tensions in the area.

Cyprus, Egypt and Greece have all condemned the Libyan-Turkish accord as contrary to international law. The foreign ministers of Egypt and Greece, Sameh Shoukry and Nikos Dendias, were discussing the issue Sunday in Cairo.

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