If someone wronged you, do you think you'd feel better after meting out justice? Most people would say yes, but this, at least according to a new study, turns out to be wrong. Psychologists asked people to play a computer game against other people for money (though, in reality, the computer was simulating the other players). During the game, one of the other "players" took advantage of the group, thereby earning more money. After the game, some participants were given the opportunity to impose a penalty (at a small cost) on the bad player, and some were allowed to see someone else impose a penalty. A control group wasn't allowed to consider penalties at all. Although people expected to feel better after imposing the penalty, those who penalized the bad player themselves felt significantly worse afterward than the control group, because, it appears, they couldn't stop thinking about the bad player. Seeing someone else impose the penalty was no worse, but no better, than being in the control group.

Colgate University Assistant Professor of Psychology Kevin Carlsmith, K. et al., "The Paradoxical Consequences of Revenge," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (December 2008).

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Corruption often conjures up images of people getting rich. But in fact, corruption's connections to poverty are far more numerous and pervasive. Corruption delays, distorts and diverts economic growth. It comes in a variety of forms, and while no two countries are alike, there are common dilemmas for all to see.

The links between corruption and poverty affect both individuals and businesses, and they run in both directions: poverty invites corruption, while corruption deepens poverty. Corruption both causes and thrives upon weaknesses in key economic, political and social institutions. It is a form of self-serving influence akin to a heavily regressive tax, benefiting the haves at the expense of the have-nots. Trust--essential to financial markets and effective governments everywhere--is difficult to build in poor and corrupt societies.

Poor people and economically strapped businesses have few economic alternatives, and where serious corruption is the norm, they are even more vulnerable to exploitation. In that sense, there is no such thing as "petty" corruption: police shakedowns in a public market, or roadblocks in the countryside where farmers must pay up in order to transport produce to the city, may yield seemingly trivial sums of money, but they help keep poor people poor.

Low-level officials themselves may have trouble earning an honest living. In poor societies, they are often underpaid, when they are paid at all, and must provide a stream of payments to patrons at higher levels. In such settings, bribery, extortion and theft become matters of survival.

For businesses small and large, and particularly for international investors, serious corruption has formidable costs. It is tempting--and, at times has been fashionable--to think of bribery as grease for the wheels of bureaucracy. And indeed a sweetener or backhander paid to the right person at the right time might help one firm, on one day, get a permit or a license more quickly.

But if we draw back from that isolated transaction, the deeply damaging dynamics become evident. A firm that pays up is telling those underpaid or unpaid officials that they can make money by dragging their feet, "losing" paperwork or contriving new requirements, forms and delays. They are erecting a very prominent sign that says, "We Pay." Such signals flash quickly through an economy and a bureaucracy, particularly where legitimate opportunities are scarce, making for even more corruption.

In corrupt markets and public bidding processes, inefficient firms and dishonest bidders have major advantages over honest competitors. Connections and cash, rather than innovation and excellence, become the ways to win contracts. Developing human capital and technical capacity for the next generation are far less attractive than graft in the here and now.

Long-suffering citizens will not get what they pay for, but they will surely pay for what they get: Waste, shoddy performance and phony cost overruns can all be covered up by bribes. The human costs of such corruption may emerge only later, when bridges crumple and large buildings collapse, as they have in the earthquake zones of Turkey, Iran and China.

At a higher level, extensive corruption threatens the basic notion of a fair return to investment, risk and work. It undermines basic property rights, the courts, police, banking and currencies. Where contracts cannot readily be enforced, assets cannot be protected, regulatory processes become tools of self-enrichment and the basic safety of persons and property is not assured. Corrupt, short-term gains might be huge, yet protecting those gains for the long term or reinvesting them may be all but impossible.

At best, such insecurities will encourage investors to maximize short-term gains and to keep assets as mobile as possible. More likely, capital flight will be the order of the day. Many of the world's best-run firms, worried about such uncertainties and seeing safer opportunities in better-governed societies, will simply stay away. Sadly, the resulting poverty and uneven development may only sharpen the incentives for further corruption.

Every country has corruption, even affluent democracies. Corruption does not explain all that is bad--or negate all that is good--in any society. There are some societies in which extensive corruption, painful as it is, may be less damaging than the real (as opposed to the ideal) immediate alternatives. Further complicating things is the reality that a good reform idea for country A can be irrelevant in country B, impossible in country C and downright harmful in country D.

Thus, no one has all the answers regarding corruption, and affluent nations have much to learn from their poorer neighbors. Ultimately, lasting reform is a matter of enabling citizens, local businesses and their international partners to insist on basic rights, depend upon the rule of law and hold accountable those who govern.

Another name for that state of affairs? Justice.

Michael Johnston is the Charles A. Dana professor of political science at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. His most recent book is Syndromes of Corruption.

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One hot summer day in 2001, Susan Schaeffler, a 30-year-old D.C. teacher, was in the basement of an Anacostia church, getting blisters assembling classroom furniture while explaining to me why her new public charter school would be different from other ill-fated educational experiments. She said the first class of students recruited for the KIPP DC: KEY Academy middle school would not be called fifth graders, but the class of 2009. Her father, helping with the furniture, said: "Oh, I get it. That's the year they will graduate from high school." "No, Dad," Schaeffler said, giving him a stern look. "That's the year they are going to college."

Nearly eight years later, Schaeffler's school for impoverished children has the highest test scores in the city. Fifty-eight of the first 62 students who completed KIPP will be going, as she promised, to college. Like other students in the class of 2009, Bernard Palmer says that emphasis on college, college, college seemed goofy to 10-year-olds who rarely heard the word at home. But Palmer, raised by his housecleaner aunt, is about to graduate from St. Albans, a selective high school more associated with lawyers' kids. He has a good chance at his first-choice college, Duke. "KIPP taught us to work hard, and everything was possible," he said.

The most-studied public-charter network in the country, KIPP (for Knowledge Is Power Program) has nine-hour days, required summer and Saturday sessions, music, sports, weeklong field trips, discipline and energetic teaching. But its focus on college for every child, no matter how underachieving, is probably its most noticeable feature, and the most difficult for Americans to understand. There are 66 KIPP schools in 19 states and D.C., a total of 17,000 students—81 percent low-income, 60 percent African-American and 35 percent Hispanic. It has the greatest test-score gains of any public-school network. Since most KIPP schools are for fifth to eighth graders, KIPP keeps track of its graduates in high school, too. Of the 688 students who have completed KIPP eighth grade so far, 576 have gone to college, an 84 percent matriculation rate.

Since I met Schaeffler, and then began writing a book about KIPP cofounders Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, I often hear people say of the KIPP fixation: "College is not for everyone, you know." They have a point. But I notice that most of the people who say this are middle-class Americans who would bridle if anyone suggested their own children would be better off in trade school.

Sending your kid to college is the nation's great unifying aspiration. It increases life's choices and doubles average incomes. But for every 100 black and Hispanic ninth graders, fewer than 20 earn a college degree—a problem that is only going to loom larger as their share of the population grows. KIPP, and a few charter groups like it, aim to change that. They've discovered college can have the same galvanizing effect in Houston's heavily Hispanic Gulfton neighborhood, where Feinberg found his first KIPP students, and the South Bronx, where Levin found his, as it has in other fashionable suburbs.

The personal touch is paramount. Inner-city students won't thrive unless teachers show they care. KIPP students who don't pay attention or misbehave are often temporarily barred from talking to other students. They must talk to teachers instead. After many conversations about what such behavior is doing to their college chances, they realize these people will not leave them alone until they shape up.

Strong teacher-student relationships drive the KIPP college effort, too. One of Levin's former students, a senior at the private high school Saint Mark's, called him for help when she was arrested for shoplifting, and was astonished to see his stern face at her door the next morning, finding a lawyer, arranging transfer to another school and lecturing her on bad choices. When the unmarried status of one Houston student's parents hurt her immigration and financial situation as she applied to college, Feinberg persuaded the couple to wed.

Dan Castillo, whose family still lives in a Bronx public-housing project, remembers KIPP classes full of collegiate insignia. University banners covered the walls. Homerooms were named after KIPP teachers' colleges, so Castillo was in the University of Chicago in fifth grade, the Brown group in sixth grade. He went to a private high school, Northfield Mount Hermon, where the workload was a shock. "But I learned at KIPP I had to make sacrifices, like the fact that I had been going to school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. since the fifth grade," he said. He will graduate from Colgate this spring with a joint major in economics and political science.

Not all KIPP graduates go to college, and not all stay, but the network is working on that. Every KIPP educator serves as a college counselor. Doric Gassaway, now in his high-school senior year at the Friendship Collegiate Academy in D.C., has gotten into some Maryland state colleges but dreams of Ivy League Columbia, with his former middle-school principal, Schaeffler, still cheering him on. "We are hoping he will be valedictorian this year," she said. She has him interning at the new KIPP primary school, and telling kindergartners they too will be going to college.

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President Barack Obama has pledged to put America back to work. If only it were that easy.

Records going back to 1948 show that every president has presided over an increase in the absolute number of jobs. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics records, which include the complete terms of every president since Dwight Eisenhower, also lay out a larger problem: The number of jobs created hasn't always kept pace with the expanding number of people who want to work.

Presidents don't have much control over either the number of new jobs or the number of people looking for work. The labor force has more than doubled since 1953, driven by factors Eisenhower couldn't have imagined, like married women looking for work and increased immigration from outside Europe.

Likewise, the number of new jobs created in a year is determined by expansions and contractions in the business cycles that begin years, even decades, before a president takes office. Economists argue about whether the current recession, and the job losses that come with it, has seeds in low interest rates while Bill Clinton was president, or deregulation under Ronald Reagan.

"Yes, good long-run policies have good effects and bad long-run policies have bad effects," said Brad DeLong, economics professor at University of California Berkeley. "But the Bush-Clinton comparison is dominated by bad luck for Bush. ... He did not make the recession."

As economic historian Michael Haines of Colgate University puts it, "Would you rather be smart or be lucky? Take lucky."

Here are some questions and answers about presidents and job creation.

Q: How can the number of jobs have expanded under every president since Eisenhower, when we've seen so many periods of high unemployment?

A: Although the total number of jobs has been greater at the end of the term than in the beginning for each president since Eisenhower, many presidents saw the nation suffer months, even years, of job losses. For instance, although Ronald Reagan's term in office is seen as a time of prosperity, the nation lost jobs for 17 straight months in his first two years in office, 1981 and 1982, as measured by month-over-month changes in non-farm payrolls.

Eisenhower had a different problem. During the years he was president, 1953 to 1961, the number of jobs expanded by more than 4 million, according to BLS statistics, while the labor force expanded by 7 million, meaning there were millions who wanted work and couldn't find any.

Other presidents were lucky enough to be in office during a period when the number of jobs grew more quickly than the labor force. That was the case for Lyndon B. Johnson, who was in office from 1963 to 1969.

(Johnson credited the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, Gardner Ackley, for the economy's growth, saying in 1968, "When Gardner took the CEA chairmanship more than three years ago, the economy was already setting peacetime records. He has kept the curve climbing, turning a youthful boom into a mature and solid eight-year expansion.")

Q: Since the number of jobs needs to grow just to keep up with a growing labor force, is there some other way to measure the jobs situation, say, the percentage of the labor force that's employed?

A: Unlike the ever-higher numbers for the total people in the work force, or the nearly uninterrupted climb of total people employed, the employment-to-population ratio (which economists affectionately call E-Pop) has bounced between 55 percent and 65 percent for 60 years.

Some of its biggest tumbles were in 1971, when Richard Nixon was president; in 1975, under Gerald Ford; and in 1983, under Reagan.

Q: Is there anything presidents can do to create jobs?

A: One thing above all else: Build infrastructure.

"We built a lot of infrastructure in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson era," Haines said. "I'm sure the interstate highway system created an incredible amount of employment. We can do it again."

Projects such as mass transit systems, bridges and harbor development not only can put people to work, they can increase productivity dramatically.

"One of the reasons India lags behind China in its growth is China has better infrastructure," Haines said.

What's important is that the projects are built in areas where they can truly contribute to economic growth. He points to West Virginia, which has won federal road construction projects that he jokes have done little besides smooth citizens' trips to other states.

Q: Can government employment projects like those we saw during the Great Depression create enough jobs to turn the economy around?

A: That's not clear. Christina Romer, Obama's designated chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, has written that New Deal spending programs "had little direct expansionary effect on the economy."

Instead, she points to the government printing more money in the years between 1933 and 1937.

Behind the increase in the money supply was something no president could control: As political tensions rose in Europe before World War II, nervous Europeans sent their gold into the United States. As wealth moved into the country, the monetary expansion that came with it stimulated spending by lowering interest rates and making credit more widely available.

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Some people do it more often and more emphatically than others. They use their hands while talking. They can't help themselves, it just happens.

And now, researchers are encouraging parents and educators to do it more often, because there's new evidence that shows being “expressive” helps children learn.

The study by Colgate University researcher Spencer Kelly focused on children learning foreign languages. It found that children learn more easily and create stronger memories when their teachers use their hands to convey their meaning.

Gabriela Leon teaches an after-school Spanish club in Kirkland and she agrees that her hands can make a big difference helping her students to learn.

“We trust our eyes more than we trust our ears. It's such a big part of how we communicate,” said Leon.

It's helpful news for teachers of foreign languages, but the Colgate findings have much broader implications, stretching all the way from early childhood learning to therapy for patients with brain trauma.

“Researchers are looking at hand gestures in autism, in downs syndrome.. different disorders that create language impairments. Patients with brain damage that affects speech, researchers are telling therapists to use their hands to help patients speak,” said Kelly.

Kelly says researchers are just beginning to understand how “visual” we are as human learners. Researchers have even documented that people who are completely blind still use their hands as an expressive means of communication.

So, how can we put this research to use? Loosen up and use your hands while you're talking.

“It's more than just flapping your hands around. It has to be meaningful and natural,” said Kelly.

In the classroom, Leon put the theory to work, first talking to her students about tying their shoes – without using her hands. No response. The beginner-level Spanish students had no idea what she was talking about.

Then she said the same thing, but used her hands. The students knew immediately that she was talking about tying her shoes.

And the research indicates that because she was using visual signals, next time Leon talks to her students about their “zapatos” (shoes), she may not need to use hand gestures, because a strong memory will already be there.

So, go ahead! Loosen up and use those hands. You may be helping someone learn without even trying.

To watch the report, click on the View Clip icon.

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Two movies. Same subject. Almost identical titles. Made independently by two filmmakers who have known each other since 1982. Yet two very different films (and filmmakers).

How could that be?

“Crude,” by Joe Berlinger (“Brother's Keeper”), and “Sweet Crude,” by Sandy Cioffi, are new documentaries about the despoiling of the third world by multinational oil companies (Ecuador in “Crude,” Nigeria in “Sweet Crude”). Focusing on similar subjects isn't that odd in the nonfiction film world; there have been two recent movies about jumping rope and three just last year about beauty contests in prisons. But the Berlinger-Cioffi coincidences border on the uncanny. Both directors graduated from Colgate University in the early 1980s, took the first film course offered at the college and left their decidedly non-cinema-centric school to pursue careers in documentaries.

But Mr. Berlinger and Ms. Cioffi represent two sides of the documentary coin. For some practitioners the medium is cinema based in reality. For others it is a tool to promote social and political change. Like many first-rate nonfiction filmmakers, Errol Morris being a prime example, Mr. Berlinger, 47, has used commercial work to bankroll his artistic agenda. For Ms. Cioffi, 46, a tenured professor of film and video at Seattle Central Community College, film has been more about politics than about making a living (although she'd like that to change). Her experience in Nigeria became a personal journey reflected on film.

Originally intending to make a movie about the building of a library in the Niger Delta, she became involved in the political struggle there, making efforts to get the message of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta into the global conversation. In the process, she was arrested by the Nigerian military.

“I've always been a believer in the idea that if you simply put a light on in a corner it changes the situation,” said Ms. Cioffi, who in 1998 was part of team recording the aftermath of the Good Friday peace accord and became firmly convinced that the presence of cameras affected the course of Northern Irish history.

Mr. Berlinger, in contrast, has made a film aiming at journalistic objectivity, a return to the vérité world he and Bruce Sinofsky (his sometime artistic partner and co-director) explored in the 1992 documentary “Brother's Keeper,” about a family of hermit brothers, the death of one and the murder trial of another.

While chronicling three years in what is now a 13-year battle against Texaco (now ChevronTexaco), filed by 30,000 indigenous Ecuadoreans whose way of life has been decimated by water pollution, Mr. Berlinger said he was moved by the poverty and degradation he saw but determined that “Crude” not be agitprop, or even activist. The film includes interviews and arguments from the accused polluters. “Some people will come away thinking the oil companies are right,” he said.

“As a storyteller, I want to present arguments and then let people dig a little deeper. But if it felt like plaintiffs' propaganda, it would be ghettoized. I'd be preaching to the converted and not to a wider, more critical audience.”

Mr. Berlinger's career trajectory, which began in advertising and was followed by a tenure with the documentary-making Maysles brothers, has included the 2004 rock documentary “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster,” made with Mr. Sinofsky. For the last eight years he has had a deal with Radical Media, a commercial-making concern in Manhattan and his base of operations for producing the Sundance Channel series “Iconoclasts” and the Emmy-winning History Channel series “10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America.”

“I don't want to overstate the case, but for a documentarian I'm doing O.K.,” he said. But since “Metallica,” “I was drifting from my roots, and this was a story I wanted to tell — not caring about money, not caring about cost, not caring about the reception. Just wanting to make a film. That's what this Ecuador project was.”

Ms. Cioffi, on the other hand, has investors (“investors is a loose word; they're really donors”) and raised $10,000 through the sale of silk-screen versions of the text messages she and her crew managed to send while under arrest in Nigeria. Her film is not just low-budget, she said; “it's low low-budget.”

What Mr. Berlinger and Ms. Cioffi do share is a desire for a slot at the Sundance Film Festival, now under way. His “Crude” got in; her “Sweet Crude” did not. With the limited number of slots at this Park City, Utah, festival, there was little likelihood that two films on such a similar topic would accepted, however dissimilar their styles. It's a yearly problem for the festival, which each year receives about 1,000 documentary submissions from the United States and about 700 from overseas, according to Caroline Libresco, a Sundance senior programmer.

Ms. Cioffi and Mr. Berlinger understand the value of this festival. “One of the reasons Sundance could have been incredible is that when you get in, all of a sudden there's coverage for your topic,” Ms. Cioffi said. “My concern is that the Niger Delta is such a huge untold story that if I get out with the film fast enough, I can help define the conversation.”

But Mr. Berlinger, who with “Crude” is having his fourth film at Sundance, knows a place in the festival can help only so much. “Are people going to really want to see a Spanish-language subtitled documentary about people dying of cancer because of the destruction of the Amazon?” he asked facetiously. “I'm not sure.” Which is why he's fully prepared to undertake the same self-distribution tactics he and Mr. Sinofsky employed with “Brother's Keeper,” and that Ms. Cioffi uses with all her documentaries: a grass-roots marketing strategy that will, again, get Mr. Berlinger back to his roots.

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A top-notch address looks to the future and starts the healing, experts say

Could the stakes be any higher for today's inauguration speech? Barack Obama will speak to a distressed and anxious nation, with billions of people worldwide hanging on his every word. Already widely praised as a gifted rhetorician, he will face his toughest test yet on his largest stage, while trying to deliver the type of address that is quoted for decades.

Ragan.com asked the experts to explain what presidents try to do, and what's on the line, at inauguration time.

“Inaugural speeches serve two purposes,” explains John Adams, coordinator of the Colgate Speaking Union at Colgate University, who's written extensively on rhetoric. “They are designed to heal whatever rough roads people had to go down to get elected. The other purpose is to lay out the agenda and the key metaphors for what's to come—and hopefully to induce people to cooperate.”

Bob Lehrman, a professor of speechwriting at American University, sees inaugural speeches as a time for the new (or re-elected) president to turn his gaze forward, not back.

“It's a looking-ahead speech,” says Lehrman. And even though it's supposed to be optimistic about the future, it shouldn't overpromise, he adds: “It can hold out the promise of success—it's optimism tempered by realism.”

He points to Ronald Reagan's 1981 speech for a good example: “Progress may be slow—measured in inches and feet, not miles—but we will progress,” said the president. And Bill Clinton echoed the same optimistic yet cautious message in 1993: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”

A sense of optimism and the sentiment that “we're all in this together” comprise the right post-campaign tone, says B. Wayne Howell, assistant professor in the communications department at Denison University. “Concession and victory speeches are the beginning of a transition from political division of the country to political unity,” says Howell. “Presidents should try to find ideas and express them in terms acceptable to the widest audience possible. Unless you win by a landslide, like Reagan in 1984, you need to win over the support of people who voted against you.”

And while the inaugural speech is supposed to be agenda-setting, it shouldn't be larded with wonky policy data, says Eric Schnure, former speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore. “This isn't the State of the Union,” explains Schnure. “People certainly want to know that their leader has policies, but the speech doesn't have to be too specific.”

Vinca Fleur, partner at West Wing Writers and former speechwriter for President Clinton, agrees, and notes that inaugural speeches are for broad, sweeping statements. “Don't get down too far in the weeds,” she says. Fleur points to George H.W. Bush's inaugural speech for an example.

“He was three grafs away from the end of his speech – the time when you're supposed to be building to a finish – and he started talking about drugs,” Fleur says. Said Bush in his address, “When that first cocaine was smuggled in on a ship, it may as well have been a deadly bacteria, so much has it hurt the body, the soul of our country.” Good thoughts, but perhaps out of place near the end of an inaugural speech.

Inaugural speeches also need to address those beyond America's borders. This has probably always been true, say speech-watchers—Kennedy did this in 1961 in speaking to “old allies” and “new states” —but never more so than today.

“It's a speech to the world,” says Adams. “There will be people reading this speech via TV subtitles in Beijing.” And the reach of tomorrow's speech is breathtaking to imagine, says Lehrman: “The Internet and YouTube have made an incredible difference in what the president needs to say.”

This global reach, Lehrman adds, means presidents shouldn't do aggressive “Go USA” flag-waving. “We're in a global crisis, and there will be millions of people listening to this speech with a lot of hostilities to the U.S.,” Lehrman says. “They need to see that there will be change ahead.”

Another common reference in inaugural speeches: tips of the hat to past addresses, says Leila Brammer, associate professor of communication studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.

“Echoing previous inaugurals is an inaugural form,” says Brammer. “This particular situation – economic crisis and international concerns—has parallels with FDR's first inaugural and Reagan's first address. The divisiveness of partisan politics is a large issue and provides a chance for him to draw upon Lincoln's first and second inaugurals.”

Like their predecessors, presidents also want to include language that will live for decades.

“Sometimes a new president will use a catchphrase he hopes will catch on,” explains Richard Vatz, professor of political rhetoric at Towson University. “Lincoln's ‘malice toward none,' Kennedy's ‘ask not what your country can do for you,' and Roosevelt's ‘nothing to fear but fear itself' will positively live in the public memory forever. President Carter's ‘new spirit' and President George H. W. Bush's ‘new breeze,' however, were forgotten before the speeches were concluded.

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Syracuse University sophomore Nykeba Corinaldi spent the fall semester worried about how she was going to pay for college and whether she would be able to return this month.

Twelve companies rejected her loan applications. Her mother lost her job because of the downturn in the economy. SU gave her thousands of dollars in financial aid, but it still wasn't enough to cover her expenses.

Corinaldi faced the possibility that she 6 couldn't afford to return to her dream school and she was not alone.

Across the country, some college students are not returning to school this month because their parents lost jobs or they face other financial difficulties.

Many colleges are reporting a drop in spring semester enrollment because students are not able to afford the cost of a college education especially at higher priced private institutions while dealing with the struggling economy, said Terry Hartle, a senior vice president with the American Council on Education.

Many college officials, including several in Central New York, are worried that next fall semester could be worse.

Many colleges across the country, including SU, are taking steps to ensure their students can afford to continue their education, Hartle said.

For the academic year starting next fall, several colleges are freezing students' college costs at their current rates; others are implementing only slight cost increases; and others are being creative in their awarding of financial aid, according to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities survey.

Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., will freeze tuition, room and board at its current 2008-09 level.

Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., is implementing a 2.69 increase in tuition, mandatory fees and room and board, its smallest percentage increase in 35 years.

Cornell University in Ithaca is implementing a new financial aid initiative that eliminates need-based loans from Cornell for students with total family incomes up to $75,000 and replaces them with grants. It also caps annual loans at $3,000 for students from families with incomes between $75,000 and $120,000. Loans will be capped annually at $7,500 for those students whose families have annual incomes over $120,000.

Students may also have to take loans from other sources. "No institution wants a student to drop out if it's a financial matter that can be addressed," Hartle said.

Syracuse University is hoping to raise $2 million by the end of the month to assist about 400 students who, like Corinaldi, SU officials say would not be able to return to school because of the struggling economy. The spring semester began Monday.

"We wanted to ensure that no Syracuse University student would leave the university because of the impact that this economic crisis has had on their family," said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, SU's associate vice president for enrollment management and director of scholarships and student aid.

Corinaldi, of Columbia, Md., said money from Syracuse Responds is covering her out-of-pocket costs to attend SU this semester, about $4,000. Without that money, she would not have been able to return to SU.

"I'm stress-free as far as finances, and I'm able to focus solely on coming to school and receiving an education versus figuring out where my next meal is coming from or how I'm going to pay for school," Corinaldi said.

As for her junior and senior year, Corinaldi said she doesn't know how she will pay for them, but she's hoping her mother, who is a social worker, will get a new job or that SU will continue to help her.

The $2 million Syracuse Responds Initiative was prompted by an increase in student appeals for institutional financial aid compared to last year, Copeland-Morgan said. So far this academic year the university has granted the financial aid requests of 1,650 students, 48 percent more than the 1,116 students SU helped during the last academic year.

The current estimated annual cost of attending SU including tuition, housing, meals, fees and books is $47,820. The university provides about $155 million in annual financial aid to about 69 percent of the student body, with an average financial aid award of $16,737, according to SU. The average loan debt for students receiving financial aid when they graduate is $22,000, according to SU. That does not reflect loans students' parents may take out.

The Syracuse Responds Initiative has raised in excess of $650,000 to be used for financial aid, said Brian Sischo, SU's associate vice president for development. The university has a $1 billion fundraising campaign under way and had raised about $615 million by the end of December, Sischo said.

Hartle said spring enrollment decreases from the fall are typical because some students switch schools, some leave for academic reasons and some decide college is not for them.

A survey conducted by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities Nov. 18 to Dec. 12 of 371 of its member institutions indicated that 49 percent of the responding presidents anticipated up to a 10 percent decline in spring semester enrollment. Seven percent expect a decline of 11 percent or more.

Many presidents reported the anticipated decreases were larger than normal, according to the report.

"The worry is that families that a year ago would have stretched to send a son or daughter to a private college or university may decide not to make that effort given the current uncertainty," Hartle said.

Officials at several local colleges said they have had some students requesting more financial aid for the spring, but not to the degree that SU is reporting.

Joseph Grant, vice president for student affairs and enrollment at the State University College at Oswego, said only a small number of people so far have contacted the college with financial concerns for the spring semester.

College officials have worked with those students to help them find loans or jobs on campus, Grant said.

Grant said he is more concerned about fall enrollment, when students and their families will likely be making decisions such as whether or not to go far from home for college, whether to attend a four-year college or two-year community college, and whether to attend college or enter the work force.

For the most part, people who are in school now, particularly people who are advanced in their education, are going to try their best to get through it," Grant said.

Dennis DePerro, Le Moyne College's vice president of enrollment management, said Le Moyne officials are also concerned about how the economy will affect fall enrollment.

There have been some student appeals for mid-year financial aid, but not a dramatic increase compared to past years, DePerro said.

"We're cautiously optimistic for the spring," DePerro said.

David Hale, Colgate University's vice president for finance and administration, said in an email that college officials so far are not aware of any students leaving the university for financial reasons.

"A small number of families have indicated a need for additional financial assistance; however, the number of requests does not appear to be above normal thus far," Hale said. "If a family's financial situation changes while a student is enrolled, Colgate will provide financial assistance so that student's course work is not disrupted due to financial constraints."

Hartle said that some community colleges may see an increase in enrollment as students leave four-year institutions for closer-to-home, less expensive institutions.

Kristine Duffy, Onondaga Community College's associate vice president for enrollment services, said that OCC's spring enrollment is up about 8 percent compared to last year, and students can continue to submit applications until Wednesday. Classes begin Jan. 26.

College officials have not heard anecdotally about any students attending OCC because the economy forced them to leave a four-year institution, Duffy said.

"But that doesn't mean we won't be hearing that. I'm sure we will," she said.

OCC has experienced a 16 percent increase in financial aid applications this academic year compared to last year, Duffy said.

OCC's 2008-09 tuition, fees and books and supplies are estimated at $4,762, according to the college Web site.

"Even at our institution, which is obviously more affordable than many others, we're certainly seeing a higher level of interest in coming to the institution and, regardless of the cost, a concern about how to pay," Duffy said.

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