ABC News Installs News Bureau at Chinese University

How's this for a foreign exchange program? Coming to a Chinese university campus near you: an official ABC News bureau.

No kidding. Seems that the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China just inked the world's first deal to have an ABC News broadcasting bureau installed on the campus, so that J-school students can pitch stories directly to editors in the United States. The deal will allow "roving" Asia reporters to pitch stories directly to a commissioning editor at the ABC News bureau in New York. The deal is similar to six others already in place at US universities.

Received this story in an email from Ying Chan at University of Hong Kong:

The American Broadcasting Company cooperates with six US universities already to provide online and on-air news. HKU’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre is the first international branch of the venture.

Director of the Broadcasting Programme at the JMSC, Jim Laurie, who worked at ABC for more than twenty years, has compiled a team of thirteen students to take part. MJ student Zela Chin and BJ student Liyi Chen will coordinate the project here in Hong Kong and are in charge of pitching ideas to the commissioning editor in New York, Christina Caron.

Thirteen students take part in this project led by Laurie, and they have already pitched their first stories.

They are pitching stories about Hong Kong and also across Asia. The first idea up for grabs is about white collar workers in Hong Kong who are bankers by day and boxers by night. Liyi [Chen, a first year Bachelors in Journalism major] was pleased with the team’s first pitch.

“Lorea’s White Collar Fight Night story went quite well. ABC accepted it pretty much immediately, so it was really encouraging. I think we have a lot of interesting stories to tell from Asia, and we’ve had a good start, so I’m hopeful!”

Pretty soon, American students are going to want to go to China to learn how to do journalism here.

Leading American Universities for Sending Students Abroad

The Institute of International Education released some figures of overseas education recently.

Here's their top ten list of the leading US universities that send students overseas, ranked in order of numbers of students sent each year.

New York University remained the leading sending institution, reporting that it gave academic credit for study abroad to 3,395 of its students, followed by Michigan State University (2,969), University of Minnesota – Twin Cities (2,521), University of Texas – Austin (2,342), University of California – Los Angeles (2,330), University of Wisconsin – Madison (2,216), University of Washington (2,124), Penn State – University Park (2,101), University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign (2,086), and University of Georgia (2,058). Open Doors 2009 reports that 53 U.S. campuses, primarily large research institutions, awarded academic credit for study abroad last year to more than 1,000 of their students.

But there are actually schools that send the largest percentage of their entire student body to study overseas during some point in their educational career.

Open Doors 2009 data on study abroad participation rates show 23 institutions that reported sending more than 80% of their students abroad at some point during their undergraduate careers. These institutions are (in alphabetical order): Antioch College, Arcadia University, Austin College, Berea College, Carleton College, Centre College, DePauw University, Earlham College, Elon University, Goucher College, Hamline University, Hartwick College, Kalamazoo College, Lee University, Lewis and Clark College, Oberlin College, Pepperdine University, Saint Olaf College, Taylor University, Transylvania University, University of Dallas, Warren Wilson College, and Wofford College.