|
(Continued from page 21)
Granted, looking down and seeing you're 5,000 feet above the ground is pretty exciting, but I've always been addicted to video games, and this is awesome," Regenhard said.
• Mastering the Corsair simulator is the first practice course for the two trainees, who are among hundreds of student pilots nationwide preparing for jobs that don't exist yet. They and their classmates are eager to cash in on the booming market for drone operators that's expected to develop after more unmanned aircraft become legal to fly in U.S. airspace, which could happen in the next few years.
• The university's unmanned aircraft degree program, the nation's first, exploded from five students in 2009 to 120 students last year. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Kansas State have since added similar programs. Dozens of other schools offer some courses in what's known as UAS -- unmanned aircraft systems -- which range from drones as big as small planes to 2-foot-wide mini-helicopters.
• ___
Celebrity tutors thrive in Hong Kong's pressure cooker race for university admission
• HONG KONG (AP) -- When the Hong Kong school year began in September, tutor Tony Chow arranged to have his face plastered on the sides of double decker buses to raise his profile.
• For many of Chow's students, the advertisements may be the closest they'll ever get to him.
• The 30-year-old teaches English grammar to thousands of secondary school pupils, who attend his after-school lessons or watch video replays of them at Modern Education's 14 branches. Chow is a celebrity tutor in Hong Kong, where there's big money to be made offering extracurricular lessons to parents desperately seeking an edge for their children preparing for the city's intense public entrance exam for university.
• Global student rankings out last week highlighted the city's cutthroat academic atmosphere. Hong Kong teens, along with Shanghai, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, dominated the list compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. American students showed little improvement and failed to reach the top 20 in math, science or reading.
• Students in East Asian societies have long relied on so-called "cram schools," but Hong Kong has taken them to a new level in recent years, with the majority of students attending the city's nearly 1,000 tutorial centers. Academies use brash (Continued on page 23)
|
|
