Headlines

The highly educated are vulnerable to meaningless violence,according to criminologist Edgar de Bie. He is conducting a studyon youths and violence in the city of Groningen, which along withNijmegen follows closely behind Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht inthe rate of violent offences. "There may well be a link betweenviolence and being a university town", De Bie suggests. Accordingto his supervisor Prof.Dr. Willem de Haan students are a favoritetarget for youths who amuse themselves by beating up 'studenttypes'. Members of fraternities, in particular, arouse a great dealof aggression. "You just sense it", says the president of Minerva,the fraternity in Leiden. "You get irritating remarks like: 'Damnstudents, doing squat while we pick up the tab."

Labor market

There will be a shortage of highly educated workers, even whenthe economy is weak. This is the rosy picture of the futuresketched by the Research Center for Education and the Labor Market'ROA' in its new labor market forecasts. Four years ago theMaastricht-based institute predicted the first shortages of highlyeducated workers. At the time, there were still many unemployedgraduates, but that has changed since then. In many areas thenumber of vacancies exceeds the number of new graduates. This willremain the case in the years to come. Job prospects for ITspecialists and economists are excellent. The number of vacanciesfor teaching positions is expected to be double the number ofgraduates. The future is somewhat less rosy, though certainly notbleak, for fine arts and pharmacy graduates.

Guyana

How does a traditional Indian community change when money entersthe picture? That was the research question Utrecht anthropologistMarileen Reinders wanted to answer when she left for the Indianvillage of Kariako in the heart of Guyana in 1995. Reinders livedamong the Carib Indians for a year and found that the golddiscovered in their territory is having an increasing effect onvillage life. Reinders observed that their traditional agriculturalactivities, such as growing cassava, are being neglected and theancient bartering system is being replaced by a money-basedeconomy. The social life of the Carib Indians has changeddramatically as well. Reinders will be presenting her findings inthe VPRO program 'Noorderlicht' this Tuesday.