Media Matters: Why Britain’s P.M. Is Popular Abroad But Hated At Home

2 Number of times that Charles de Gaulle served as prime minister of France, before becoming president for 10 years

2 Number of times that Jacques Chirac served as prime minister of France, before becoming president for 12 years

Lingua Franca: Offshore English
Without a doubt, English is the lingua franca of global business. But oddly, native speakers are at a disadvantage when it comes to brokering deals in their mother tongue. Foreign clients, confused by Anglophone colloquialisms, often prefer to work with other non-native speakers. In order to combat this trend, London's Canning School teaches "offshore English" to future CEOs looking to clean up their language when working abroad.

Offshore English consists of 1,500 or so of the most common English words. It emerged in the 1990s as European and Asian firms saw their international fortunes rise, and it's proved a hit at Canning, where offshore-English course enrollment has doubled in the past decade.

So what do these classes teach? Mainly, what to avoid: no idioms (say "make every possible effort" instead of "pull out all the stops"). No substitutions (don't say "put off" for "postpone"). Use Latin-based words ("obtain") instead of those with Germanic roots ("get"). By the end of class, your vocabulary may be poorer, but your company's prospects will be all the wealthier.
—Christopher Werth

College Admissions: For Seniors, The Waiting Game Is On
High-school seniors just survived what experts say was the most brutal college-admissions season ever—but now it's the colleges' turn to sweat. A record number of applications, a shaky economy and changes to financial-aid and early-decision programs have made it difficult for the most selective colleges to gauge how many accepted students will actually enroll. To hedge their bets, some schools accepted more students than usual and also assembled longer wait lists.

Institutions rely on historical models to determine their acceptance totals, says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, and "most of the time [the models] are amazingly good. But we run into problems during periods of turmoil." This year's dilemma was due to a record number of high-school seniors—the classes of 2008 and 2009 are the tip of the baby boom's baby boomlet—all competing for roughly the same number of freshman slots. Many students decided to improve their odds by applying to a greater number of schools, says Maria Laskaris, Dartmouth's dean of admissions. A few years ago, most students applied to five or six schools; this year, counselors at some of the most competitive high schools had to impose caps of 10 to 12 per student.

The problem for colleges, says Nassirian, is that they don't know how many of their accepted students have also been accepted elsewhere—or "if they're the student's first choice or their 10th. Students always think the colleges hold all the cards, but they don't." As a result, some college administrators are working their phones, lobbying their best candidates for a commitment. "That," Nassirian says, "was unheard of 20 years ago."
—Pat Wingert and  Daniel Stone

© 2008