Radio Raves
March 23, 2012
You wouldn’t think that radio would be found on a list of bold new communication ideas, but sometimes what’s old is new again. And effective.
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) and the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) are providing public service announcements to all the nation’s radio stations. The MHSAA distributed CDs of the PSAs to Michigan’s 293 radio stations in January.
Each CD has four PSAs. And each PSA ends with the message: “High school sports – a winning part of a complete education.”
One month after our distribution of the CDs, Michigan ranked in the top five states in terms of the number of airings and the estimated monetary value of the airtime.
To hear these messages, click here and look for the Participate & Succeed logo.
Growth Industry
December 26, 2014
We have wondered why Michigan’s high schools would enroll more J-1 visa students than in any other state, as well as more J-1 and F-1 visa students combined than the schools of any other state. It certainly can’t be our weather!
Like schools in many states, Michigan schools are looking to foreign countries to fill classrooms where enrollments have been falling, and they are looking to the tuition dollars of international students to help fill the hole of declining state funding.
And schools across the US are finding a hungry market, especially in Asia where families are willing to pay almost any amount to give their children the kind of educational opportunities their own countries don’t, including a leg up in gaining admission to a US college or university.
One unique contributing factor to our state’s leading totals is the late date when public school classes start in the fall. International students who miss the start of school in states which begin classes two, three or four weeks before Michigan can still try for a placement in Michigan where public high schools cannot begin classes until after Labor Day.
These late, scrambling and sometimes inadequately vetted enrollments are one of the many problems attendant to the increasing numbers of J-1 and F-1 visa students enrolling in Michigan each year. More serious are the “pipelines” that, for example, direct basketball players to some schools and ice hockey players to other schools.
It makes some people feel warm and fuzzy, but a lot more people get hot under the collar, to observe a foreign exchange student become a suddenly successful basketball team’s high scorer and rebounder, and then later be given a Division I university basketball scholarship. Or be the leading scorer on an ice hockey team that posts its best record and deepest MHSAA tournament run in the school’s history.
My wife and I have hosted an international college level student in our home for almost two years. I know the benefits to both parties. And I also know that there is a growing number of problems related to sports and profit that need to be stopped, or at least sent to some other state.