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jeff_z_xu@yahoo.com; [DR. JEFF PhD in fOrex]

[forextrading-150] Free Basic FX Training @ Oct 18

Hi Forex Traders,

The FREE Forex 101 training program is coming back again. In October training session, the following two topics will be covered:

1. MetaTrader 4 Introduction

For those are new to MetaTrader 4 trading platform, it is good orientation session to help you know its powerful features. Having a good understanding of MT4 is also the starting point of the hot topic in Forex trading industry – automated trading. This session will be led by Sugeng.

Sugeng Sanusi Shi is a part-time trader who will be sharing his experiences along on his learning journey together with you on MT4.

2. Indicator 101 – The Power of Moving Average

Starting from this month, indicator 101 series, which is part of FOREX 101 program, will be kicked off. Those popular indicators will be reviewed one by one at very detail level. Additional trading strategies and automated trading systems will be also introduced and shared around those indicators.

In the first session, we will cover the most traditional and popular indicator – Moving Average.

The session will be provided by Dr. Jeff Xu. Dr. Jeff started automated Forex trading since 2007. He participated in Automated Trading Championship in 2008. Currently, he is also providing Expert Advisor Development workshop training and Expert Advisor Builder Workshop training in Singapore.

Again, the whole workshop is FREE. So please grab a seat before it run off quickly.

Thank You.

Organizers of Forex 101 Training Program

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DMG - Eric LEE

Tougher For Investors To Apply PR Status

From Oct 01 2010, applicants with entrepreneurial experience and business track record must have a turnover of $30 million annually.

From Jan 01 2011, minimum investment sum will be $2.5 million

Money spent on residential property will no longer be considered part of the applicant's investments.

Parents and Parents-in-law are no longer eligible to be included in the candidate's Global Investor Program (GIP) application for PR status. ..

Do you see the potential in Real Estate business?

www.catherinepang.com

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DMG - Eric LEE

Tougher For Investors To Apply PR Status

From Oct 01 2010, applicants with entrepreneurial experience and business track record must have a turnover of $30 million annually.

From Jan 01 2011, minimum investment sum will be $2.5 million

Money spent on residential property will no longer be considered part of the applicant's investments.

Parents and Parents-in-law are no longer eligible to be included in the candidate's Global Investor Program (GIP) application for PR status. ..

Do you see the potential in Real Estate business?

www.catherinepang.com

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BMW recalls 200,000 luxury vehicles

BMW's recall of nearly 200,000 luxury vehicles in the U.S. to fix leaks that could develop in the power braking system may extend to another 150,000 cars around the globe.

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M<a href='http://www.fnetravel.com/english/gentinghighlandshotels/mf/first-world-hotel.html'>a</a>laysia's biggest hotel, First World Hotel, has opened its doors on December 15th, 2000. Situated 51km from the hustle and bustle of Kuala Lumpur, this hotel is the latest addition to five other hotels in Genting - City of Entertainment.

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First World Hotel is the third largest hotel in the world by rooms. It comprises Tower 1 and Tower 2, each with 28 floors, and has a total of 6,118 rooms.

It is one of the five hotels located in Genting Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia, along with Genting Hotel, Theme Park Hotel, Highlands Hotel and Resort Hotel.

It was the largest hotel in the world until The Palazzo, an expansion of The Venetian in Las Vegas was opened in January 2008.

The hotel is managed by First World Hotel and Resorts Sdn. Bhd, one of two major companies operating at Genting Highlands resort (the other is Resorts World Bhd). The resort can be reached by the Genting Skyway, which is the world's fastest (and Southeast Asia's longest) cable car, which travels at 6 metres per second.^[1]

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Achievements

On December 18, 2006, Guinness World Records listed the First World Hotel as the world's largest hotel complex by numbers of rooms and not by constructed area.^[3]

Tower 1 of the First World Hotel. Tower 2 is not visible

because the photo was taken before it was built

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Oct 2, 2010

Unwarranted rise in premium as one ages

IN DETERMINING car insurance premiums, insurance companies here may be relying on a flawed actuarial table that unfairly penalises baby boomers like me, notwithstanding their sound health status and driving record.

This came to light recently in my search for the best and cheapest comprehensive insurance coverage for a two-year-old used car. My agent's inquiries turned up a rude shock: My premium would be rather high because my age puts me in a high-risk group.

I am told that each insurance company has its own age-based actuarial table from which to determine the premiums. However, in the absence of data-backed relative risks across age, the presumption that driving risk increases linearly with age is probably without validity.

In fact, there is evidence to the contrary and statistics have shown that younger drivers tend to be at higher risk of fatal crashes compared with older ones.

Similar data for Singapore, if available, should be taken into account by insurance companies in developing actuarial tables that are more realistic and fair.

Lee Seck Kay

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Oct 2, 2010

Look into PSLE discrepancy

I CANNOT help but agree with Madam The Ai Hwa ("Exam setters"; Monday).

I am very much involved in guiding my daughter and preparing her for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) this year. I have mentioned to the teachers in charge that the material covered by the textbooks does not adequately meet the demands of the questions drawn up by PSLE examiners.

Unfortunately, there are not many teachers who are bold enough to bring up this discrepancy to the relevant authorities.

I, too, have often found it too difficult to answer the exam questions based on just the textbooks and have on many occasions turned to the Internet or guide books for answers. While I am fine with additional research being done by children, this often interrupts the flow of study and sometimes would also lead to other distractions.

I hope the Ministry of Education will look into this matter, especially since teachers are not coming forward with their feedback.

Gomez Carmael

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Working in an office stinks, doesn’t it?

If home working is so great, why aren’t we doing it? As usual, it’s the boss’ fault

Phil Daoust

WORK stinks, doesn’t it? Or, at least, going to the office. The good news is, it doesn’t have to. Millions of us are doing jobs that could be carried out just as well at home.

“I can’t help feeling that our descendants will look back at us and think: ‘What on earth were they thinking?’,” says Ms Shirley Borrett, development director for the Telework Association, which promotes working from home.

Whether you call this teleworking, telecommuting or home working, it’s a growing market. Banks, call centres, councils, management consultancies, software companies, law firms, PR agencies: All are increasingly allowing their staff to do it at least part-time.

Telecoms giant BT, the pioneer in Britain in the ’80s, now has 65,000 flexible workers, of whom 10,000 do not come in to the office.

Ms Melanie Pinola, who writes about home working for About.com, says jobs that can be done remotely range from accountancy to telemarketing, via financial analysis, translation, data entry, graphic design, illustration, insurance, media buying, speech-writing, research, sales, travel agency, stockbroking, website design, writing and editing.

So how do you join the home-working masses?

You have a very strong business case — if you can persuade your company to listen.

Not only do home workers reduce the need for expensive premises, they are often vastly more productive. Some American studies have shown a 30- to 40-per-cent increase in productivity when people work from home.

Mr Noel Hodson, who was one of the key figures in home working, suggests that this is at least partly down to the removal of the daily commute: “What we found was that most of the time saved went back into work.

These workers valued their new way of working, and to protect it they did more work.”

And there are bonuses for society. Home working encourages a more diverse labour force, bringing in not just carers but those who have difficulty travelling because they are disabled or live in remote locations. Then there’s the reduction in pollution and greenhouse gases.

WHAT ’S STOPPING US ?

So if home working is so great, why aren’t we all doing it already? As usual, it’s the boss’s fault. Mr Hodson remembers trying to sell home working to a firm of engineers. “As I went through the economics, I touched on the thought that the company car wouldn’t be necessary any more — and the managing director reached across the desk and took me by the tie in a stranglehold ... It was his big shiny Jaguar that was sitting in the car park for seven and three-quarter hours a day.”

When it’s not their cars they are worried about, it’s their empires. If bosses can’t see what their staff are doing, how will they know that they are working?

“The last barriers are attitudinal,” says Ms Caroline Waters, BT’s company’s director of people and policy . “But it’s a real myth that you have control over what your people do just because they sit in the same location.”

“Presenteeism is a really poor performance indicator. It in no way gives the kind of productivity measure that you need to run a successful business,” said Ms Waters, who works from home at least one day a week.

Firms that embrace home working have to find some better gauge. Mr Mark Thomas is chief executive of Word Association, a PR consultancy that employs 13 people, all working from home.

“We’ve managed to come up with measures of performance that are more to do with output than with the amount of time that people spend at their desk,” he says.

The logical accompaniment to home working is a more relaxed attitude to working hours. “I’ve had managers say to me: ‘But they might go to Tescos (the supermarket) on Wednesday afternoon’,” says Ms Borrett. “To which I reply: ‘If you’re truly being flexible ... then what does it matter, so long as you’re getting whatever output it is you want?’”

“It all comes down to trust,” she adds.

“Trust that people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, though not necessarily at the same time as they’d be doing it in the office.”

The last thing any manager needs to worry about is idleness, says Ms Pinola, who works at home in the United States. “You tend to overwork as a remote worker because you don’t want to appear to be slacking off.”

Will some employers abuse this? What do you think? The same technology that makes it possible to escape the office — mobile phones, laptops, broadband — makes it that much harder to get away from your boss.

First they give you a BlackBerry, then they start emailing you at 1am. But that’s true even if you work in an office, nine to five.

Whether or not we’ve agreed to it, many of us are already on call 24/7.

IT MAY NOT BE FOR EVERYONE ...

While you’re whipping your bosses into shape, don’t forget your nearest and dearest. Let them

Ms Pinola says: “My immediate family knows that when the door to my home office is closed, I am really busy. I try to have them imagine that I’m not even there.”

Is there anyone who shouldn’t attempt to work from home?

Well, yes: Anyone who doesn’t want to. For some, the office is important. It provides clear lines between work from home, a break from the family, colleagues to talk to and a creative environment.

Ms Borrett says of home working: “It’s not for people who’ve got a very young family and nowhere separate to work.

It usually doesn’t suit people who are in their early 20s and still living with their parents.

“Young people also want to get a social life out of their work life.”

Not, of course, that home workers have to feel isolated.

There’s no law that says you can’t call them into the office if you have one, or find some other meeting place.

Mr Thomas holds monthly production meetings for his staff “where we get together to work through every single client, every single job”.

In between, there are phone calls, emails, instant messaging. If you’re all logged on to MSN, you can swap little messages with your co-workers all day long. If you’ve got a smartphone, you can even do it when you’re at the supermarket.

Where could this all end?

Just imagine turning up at the office one day and being sent home with a flea in your ear:

“What the hell are you doing here? We don’t want you sitting around chatting and drinking coffee. You should be at home, working.” know that when you’re working, you’re working.The Guardian

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Working in an office stinks, doesn’t it?

If home working is so great, why aren’t we doing it? As usual, it’s the boss’ fault

Phil Daoust

WORK stinks, doesn’t it? Or, at least, going to the office. The good news is, it doesn’t have to. Millions of us are doing jobs that could be carried out just as well at home.

“I can’t help feeling that our descendants will look back at us and think: ‘What on earth were they thinking?’,” says Ms Shirley Borrett, development director for the Telework Association, which promotes working from home.

Whether you call this teleworking, telecommuting or home working, it’s a growing market. Banks, call centres, councils, management consultancies, software companies, law firms, PR agencies: All are increasingly allowing their staff to do it at least part-time.

Telecoms giant BT, the pioneer in Britain in the ’80s, now has 65,000 flexible workers, of whom 10,000 do not come in to the office.

Ms Melanie Pinola, who writes about home working for About.com, says jobs that can be done remotely range from accountancy to telemarketing, via financial analysis, translation, data entry, graphic design, illustration, insurance, media buying, speech-writing, research, sales, travel agency, stockbroking, website design, writing and editing.

So how do you join the home-working masses?

You have a very strong business case — if you can persuade your company to listen.

Not only do home workers reduce the need for expensive premises, they are often vastly more productive. Some American studies have shown a 30- to 40-per-cent increase in productivity when people work from home.

Mr Noel Hodson, who was one of the key figures in home working, suggests that this is at least partly down to the removal of the daily commute: “What we found was that most of the time saved went back into work.

These workers valued their new way of working, and to protect it they did more work.”

And there are bonuses for society. Home working encourages a more diverse labour force, bringing in not just carers but those who have difficulty travelling because they are disabled or live in remote locations. Then there’s the reduction in pollution and greenhouse gases.

WHAT ’S STOPPING US ?

So if home working is so great, why aren’t we all doing it already? As usual, it’s the boss’s fault. Mr Hodson remembers trying to sell home working to a firm of engineers. “As I went through the economics, I touched on the thought that the company car wouldn’t be necessary any more — and the managing director reached across the desk and took me by the tie in a stranglehold ... It was his big shiny Jaguar that was sitting in the car park for seven and three-quarter hours a day.”

When it’s not their cars they are worried about, it’s their empires. If bosses can’t see what their staff are doing, how will they know that they are working?

“The last barriers are attitudinal,” says Ms Caroline Waters, BT’s company’s director of people and policy . “But it’s a real myth that you have control over what your people do just because they sit in the same location.”

“Presenteeism is a really poor performance indicator. It in no way gives the kind of productivity measure that you need to run a successful business,” said Ms Waters, who works from home at least one day a week.

Firms that embrace home working have to find some better gauge. Mr Mark Thomas is chief executive of Word Association, a PR consultancy that employs 13 people, all working from home.

“We’ve managed to come up with measures of performance that are more to do with output than with the amount of time that people spend at their desk,” he says.

The logical accompaniment to home working is a more relaxed attitude to working hours. “I’ve had managers say to me: ‘But they might go to Tescos (the supermarket) on Wednesday afternoon’,” says Ms Borrett. “To which I reply: ‘If you’re truly being flexible ... then what does it matter, so long as you’re getting whatever output it is you want?’”

“It all comes down to trust,” she adds.

“Trust that people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, though not necessarily at the same time as they’d be doing it in the office.”

The last thing any manager needs to worry about is idleness, says Ms Pinola, who works at home in the United States. “You tend to overwork as a remote worker because you don’t want to appear to be slacking off.”

Will some employers abuse this? What do you think? The same technology that makes it possible to escape the office — mobile phones, laptops, broadband — makes it that much harder to get away from your boss.

First they give you a BlackBerry, then they start emailing you at 1am. But that’s true even if you work in an office, nine to five.

Whether or not we’ve agreed to it, many of us are already on call 24/7.

IT MAY NOT BE FOR EVERYONE ...

While you’re whipping your bosses into shape, don’t forget your nearest and dearest. Let them

Ms Pinola says: “My immediate family knows that when the door to my home office is closed, I am really busy. I try to have them imagine that I’m not even there.”

Is there anyone who shouldn’t attempt to work from home?

Well, yes: Anyone who doesn’t want to. For some, the office is important. It provides clear lines between work from home, a break from the family, colleagues to talk to and a creative environment.

Ms Borrett says of home working: “It’s not for people who’ve got a very young family and nowhere separate to work.

It usually doesn’t suit people who are in their early 20s and still living with their parents.

“Young people also want to get a social life out of their work life.”

Not, of course, that home workers have to feel isolated.

There’s no law that says you can’t call them into the office if you have one, or find some other meeting place.

Mr Thomas holds monthly production meetings for his staff “where we get together to work through every single client, every single job”.

In between, there are phone calls, emails, instant messaging. If you’re all logged on to MSN, you can swap little messages with your co-workers all day long. If you’ve got a smartphone, you can even do it when you’re at the supermarket.

Where could this all end?

Just imagine turning up at the office one day and being sent home with a flea in your ear:

“What the hell are you doing here? We don’t want you sitting around chatting and drinking coffee. You should be at home, working.” know that when you’re working, you’re working.The Guardian

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Sat: 2 OCT 2010 TODAY ONLINE

Auditor-General ‘needs boost’

Letter from James Ang

THE corruption case at the Singapore Land Authority brings to mind the last two reports by the Auditor-General.

In these, it expressed concern about certain procurement and financial processes in the various ministries and agencies.

While I am glad that $10 million in cash and assets have been recovered in the present case, it is hoped that every ministry and agency learns from this episode and starts implementing specific control measures.

In addition, the Auditor-General’s Office could be provided with more resources as the Government has grown in size over the last decade.

pharoah88 ( Date: 29-Sep-2010 09:01) Posted:

Former deputy director charged;

manager helping with investigation

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America’s deepening moral crisis

For 40 years, compassion in politics receded.

Ronald Reagan gained popularity by cutting social benefits for the poor (claiming that the poor cheated to receive extra payments).

Bill Clinton continued those cuts in the ’90s. Today, no politician even dares to mention help for poor people.

Jeffrey Sachs

America’s political and economic crisis is set to worsen following next month’s elections.

Project Syndicate

The writer is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.

President Barack Obama will lose any hope for passing progressive legislation aimed at helping the poor or the environment.

Indeed, all major legislation and reforms are likely to be stalemated until 2013, following a new presidential election. An already bad situation marked by deadlock and vitriol is likely to worsen and the world should not expect much leadership from a bitterly-divided United States.

Much of America is in a nasty mood and the language of compassion has more or less been abandoned. Both political parties serve their rich campaign contributors, while proclaiming that they defend the middle class.

Neither party even mentions the poor, who now officially make up 15 per cent of the population but in fact are even more numerous, when we count all those households struggling with health care, housing, jobs and other needs.

The Republican Party recently issued a “Pledge to America” to explain its beliefs and campaign promises. The document is filled with nonsense, such as the fatuous claim that high taxes and over-regulation explain America’s high unemployment. It is also filled with propaganda.

A quote by President John F Kennedy states that high tax rates can strangle the economy but Kennedy was speaking a half century ago, when the top marginal tax rates were twice what they are today. Most of all, the Republican platform is devoid of compassion.

America today presents the paradox of a rich country falling apart because of the collapse of its core values. American productivity is among the highest in the world. Average national income per person is about US$46,000 ($60,500) — enough not only to live on but to prosper. Yet the country is in the throes of an ugly moral crisis.

Income inequality is at historic highs but the rich claim that they have no responsibility to the rest of society. They refuse to come to the aid of the destitute and defend tax cuts at every opportunity.

Almost everybody complains, almost everybody aggressively defends their own narrow and short-term interests and almost everybody abandons any pretence of looking ahead or addressing the needs of others.

What passes for American political debate is a contest between the parties to give bigger promises to the middle class, mainly in the form of Budget-busting tax cuts at a time when the fiscal deficit is already more than 10 per cent of GDP. Americans seem to believe that they have a natural right to government services without paying taxes.

In the American political lexicon, taxes are defined as a denial of liberty.

There was a time, not long ago, when Americans talked of ending poverty at home and abroad.

Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty in the mid-’60s reflected an era of national optimism and the belief that society should make collective efforts to solve common problems, such as poverty, pollution and health care. America in the ’60s enacted programmes to rebuild poor communities, to fight air and water pollution and to ensure health care for the elderly. Then the deep divisions over Vietnam and civil rights, combined with a surge of consumerism and advertising, seemed to end an era of shared sacrifice for the common good.

For 40 years, compassion in politics receded. Ronald Reagan gained popularity by cutting social benefits for the poor (claiming that the poor cheated to receive extra payments). Bill Clinton continued those cuts in the ’90s.

Today, no politician even dares to mention help for poor people.

The big campaign contributors to both parties pay to ensure that their vested interests dominate political debates.

That means that both parties increasingly defend the interests of the rich, though Republicans do so slightly more than Democrats.

Even a modest tax increase on the rich is unlikely to find support in American politics.

The result of all of this is likely to be a long-term decline of US power and prosperity because Americans no longer invest collectively in their common future. America will remain a rich society for a long time to come but one that is increasingly divided and unstable. Fear and propaganda may lead to more US-led international wars, as in the past decade.

And what is happening in America is likely to be repeated elsewhere. America is vulnerable to social breakdown because it is a highly diverse society. Racism and antiimmigrant sentiments are an important part of the attack on the poor or at least the reason why so many are willing to heed the propaganda against helping the poor.

As other societies grapple with their own increasing diversity, they may follow the US into crisis.

Swedes recently gave enough votes to a right-wing, anti-immigrant party to give it representation in Parliament, reflecting a growing backlash against the rising number of immigrants in Swedish society.

In France, Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has tried to regain popularity with the working class by deporting Roma migrants, a target of widespread hatred and ethnic attacks.

Both examples show that Europe, like the US, is vulnerable to the politics of division, as our societies become more ethnically diverse.

The lesson from America is that economic growth is no guarantee of wellbeing or political stability. American society has become increasingly harsh, where the richest Americans buy their way to political power and the poor are abandoned to their fate.

In their private lives, Americans have become addicted to consumerism, which drains their time, savings, attention and inclination to engage in acts of collective compassion.

The world should beware. Unless we break the ugly trends of big money in politics and rampant consumerism, we risk winning economic productivity at the price of our humanity.

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MAS may revalue Singdollar: Analysts

SINGAPORE

The currency reached a record high of $1.3120 against the US dollar on Friday. The local currency has gained 6.6 per cent this year, the third-best performance among the most-traded Asian currencies excluding Japan, after the MAS on April 14 unexpectedly revalued the exchange rate.

Morgan Stanley has revised its year-end forecast for the Singapore dollar higher to $1.28 against the greenback from a previous estimate of $1.35.

“The MAS will need to recentre the nominal effective exchange rate band in order to allow more headroom for the Singapore dollar to move higher,” wrote Morgan Stanley analysts Stewart Newnham and Yee Wai Chong in a report for clients.

“The combination of strong above-trend growth and a large external surplus is likely to continue to generate powerful, positive macro dynamic support for the Singapore dollar.”

Morgan Stanley expects the Singapore economy to grow 16 per cent this year, above the official forecast of between 13 and 15 per cent.

The bank expects 6 per cent growth next year. The balance of payments reached $13.7 billion in the three months through June, a fifth quarterly surplus, data from the Department of Statistics showed.

The MAS uses the exchange rate rather than interest rates to conduct monetary policy, adjusting the central slope or width of an undisclosed band of currencies in which the Singapore dollar is allowed to fluctuate.

The date of the MAS meeting this month has not yet been made public. — The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) may allow the Singapore dollar to strengthen further at a twice yearly meeting this month because of the nation’s strong economic growth and balance of payments, according to Morgan Stanley.AGENCIES

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Green utopia rises From arabian Sands

A Sustainable City in the Desert

Promoters of Masdar, a city under construction near Abu Dhabi, say that it will be the world's first carbon-neutral city, It will be home to a research institute focused on renewable energy and sustainability. and eventually, if all goes as planned, to various clean-technology companies, and to a proyected 45,000 residents and another 45,O00 commuters.

Neighborhoods will have distinct buildings and design elements. Masdar Plaza, for example, will have 54 sunshades that open and close automatically at dawn and dusk.

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Low Fare, Leg Room Optional
joe sharkey
LONG BEACH, California —
Long rumored and joked about, the so-called stand-up airplane seat was unveiled at the Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas trade show in mid-September. The SkyRider was the most talked about event of the show.
“Like riding a horse,” said Dominique Menoud, the director general of Aviointeriors, the Italian aircraft seat manufacturer, after I had slid into the company’s new contraption. “It is very comfortable, no?”
“No,” I replied, though Mr. Menoud seemed to take that as an assent.
It was definitely not comfortable, although the seat is being promoted as resembling a horse saddle. I have ridden many a horse, and the SkyRider is nothing like being in the saddle. Sitting in one was more like being wedged, legs braced, on a stationary bicycle.
The seat is being marketed mostly for shorter haul flights of two hours or so. But Mr. Menoud said that the seats could also be used on flights up to four hours.
Aviointeriors said the seat allowed for a new basic class of seating with a “much reduced seat pitch.” Most coach seats have about 75 or 82 centimeters of pitch, the industry definition of the distance between one point in a seat and the same point in the seat ahead. A few discount airlines have seats with 71 centimeters of pitch, but the SkyRider is intended to have 58 or less.
Before a seat like the SkyRider would actually turn up on airplanes, there remain various hurdles — chief among them safety concerns about emergency evacuations from planes with passengers crammed into such tight spaces. But experts in cabin interior engineering from the major aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus, discussed the stand-up seat at the show and, while both were skeptical, neither dismissed the idea.
Have any airlines signed up?
“No, but we are in discussions right now, and there is a lot of interest from carriers around the world,” Mr. Menoud said. He would not identify which airlines his company has been talking to, but said two are in the United States.
Before the trade show, Ryanair, the European discount carrier, had said it hoped to win regulatory approval to put rows of stand-up seats, with the cheapest fares, in rear sections of its planes. Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, recently said on British television said the airline was thinking of taking out some existing seats to install “the equivalent of 10 rows of standing area.”
In the United States, the somewhat brash discount carrier Spirit Airlines would seem another likely suspect, but Spirit declined to comment when I asked.
What is the SkyRider like?
Well, it’s a tight fit. You sidle in and perch on a little pitched seat.
The “passenger’s body,” as Aviointeriors describes it, assumes “a comfortable, dynamic, upright and healthy position.” My impression was like being strapped into an amusement park thrill ride.
Even in a semistanding position, belted in against a tall seat back, you have scant room to maneuver. And because the seats are high, you would have a tough job in a crash vaulting over the SkyRider in front.
Aviointeriors says the SkyRider has undergone extensive testing and will meet all regulatory safety standards. The seat is being promoted as an option for airlines that might want to more profitably use space in any given airplane. A Boeing 737, for example, could be configured with 16 business-class seats, 66 standard coach seats and 98 SkyRiders, Aviointeriors says.
“The concept is to allow for an extra class of seating” with very low fares, Mr. Menoud said. Of course, there are things some of us won’t do, even for a cheap fare.
But the market potential is there.

“Clearly, there are a lot of potential barriers even before they could get to the point of installing this type of seat, but there’s something to be said about carriers being able to put more customers into smaller spaces and being able to offer rock-bottom prices,” said Bryan Saltzburg, the general manager of Trip Advisor flight search. “There is a segment of the market that this seat will cater to.”essaY

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? FREE MARKET MATURITY MODEL ? ZHI Zi

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As Tuition Soars Globally, Schools Face a Need for Frugality

By CONRAD DE AENLLE

College tuition and other fees have risen for years in many countries, and the economic and financial crisis almost ensures that the trend will persist or worsen.

Students and their families will have to get used to bearing a greater share of the burden, the experts say.

But universities may be forced to operate more efficiently and frugally, they say, as those who pay the bills become smarter, more cost conscious shoppers.

Margaret Spellings, senior adviser at the Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, and secretary of education under President George W. Bush, blames government’s failure to demand more value for the money spent, and an elitism that she says is entrenched in academia.

“Affordability is an issue worldwide,” said Ms. Spellings, “People are up in arms. Tuition is going up, but an interest in reform is going up for the first time ever.”

Well before the crisis, the cost of a university education almost invariably advanced at a faster pace than the general level of inflation.

“There is no policy set up in any of our systems anywhere in the world to drive universities toward productivity and efficiency,” she said.

“We don’t collect any data. We don’t know what we’re getting for our money, and neither do students or taxpayers.”

Soaring demand for university places is also driving up costs, as is a desire by governments to accommodate the demand.

“Part of the problem in much of the world is exploding enrollments,” said D. Bruce Johnstone, emeritus professor of education at the State University of New York in Buffalo.

He said conditions were especially acute in developing nations.

And he cited a Western penchant for academic egalitarianism, in which higher university enrollments are sought as a matter of public policy.

“An expectation of an entitlement to participation in a research university is part of the problem,” Mr. Johnstone said. He noted that all secondary school graduates in France and Germany who pass a national examination are guaranteed university admission.

Tuition rose 106 percent between 1997 and 2007 at American public universities and 76 percent at private universities, to $7,171 and $30,260, respectively, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

It is lower everywhere else, although it can be quite high relative to incomes, especially in the developing world. The 23 million students attending Chinese universities pay about $3,000 a year, Mr. Johnstone said; the government has warned that fees will go up.

Tuition in India varies, he said, but it works out to about $600 a year for average universities and much more for the elite technology institutes.

Chinese and Indian schools have no shortage of applicants, but in Japan, enrollments are shrinking.

The government in the middle of the decade began cutting revenue to universities by a percentage point or two every year. In return it gave universities greater autonomy in setting faculty salaries and tuition rates. The average tuition there is about $4,500.

Tuitions are assessed at much lower rates in Continental Europe, Mr. Johnstone noted.

“European countries introduce tuition fees amid enormous political controversy,” he remarked. Eventually conditions deteriorate and the authorities are forced to increase fees, he said, “and then everyone really screams.”

Official Europe has begun to accept the idea of tuition, with an important caveat. Dennis Abbott, the European Commission spokesman on education, pointed to “a distinct trend to increased cost sharing” between students and state sources, although he stressed that fees “should be supported by grants and/or loans to ensure that financing does not represent an undue barrier to participation in higher education.”

Higher tuition is not the only suggestion for closing the funding gap.

A 2006 report by the Center for European Reform, a London-based, centrist research organization, encouraged European universities to become more competitive and more entrepreneurial and, although it did not say so explicitly, more American.

The authors also recommended paying faculty on the basis of merit; lobbying aggressively with state and private funding sources, like alumni; and wooing corporate benefactors.

One way to improve affordability and productivity, Mr. Abbott said, is to make sure first that students at universities want and need to be there.

“Too many young people are embarking upon university careers but dropping out before completing their courses,” he said.

“This represents a missed opportunity, both in terms of the human potential of the individual student and in terms of the best value for money. Better advice and guidance, combined with improved support, including financial support, should be made available.”

For those who do attend college, there should be more flexibility, Ms. Spellings said. She said she expected an increase in “a la carte, hybrid, technology-based education,” in which students take courses in person, online and at times of their own choosing. “Consumers are demanding it,” she said.

“Things are starting to change, as prices have gotten so ridiculous,” Ms. Spellings continued. “People are starting to ask the right questions that would have been heretical five years ago. Universities have enjoyed their ivory tower status of being above it all, but they’re beginning to change and it’s happening worldwide.”