Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9003142484
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: BUS1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Kara Swisher The Washington Post
DATELINE: SALEM, W.VA. LENGTH: Long
Then, in the spring of 1988, salvation for the 101-year-old institution came from an unlikely source: Japan.
Ohl got a letter, one of dozens sent to small U.S. colleges, from Teikyo University in Tokyo, asking if the school wanted to be bought.
Intrigued, Ohl pursued the query. And starting next month, 200 Japanese students will arrive on the 150-acre campus 80 miles northwest of Charleston, the first wave resulting from a $20 million deal Salem has struck with Teikyo.
By 1995, 500 Japanese and 500 American students will live and study together, earning four-year undergraduate degrees from what has been renamed Salem-Teikyo University.
The arrangement is part of a series of such linkups in recent years as Japanese educational institutions and corporations have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to send more Japanese students here to experience America's education system, accelerating the transpacific trade in higher education.
In Loudoun County, Va., EIE International Corp., a $7 billion Japanese real estate company involved in hotel development, shipping, cargo and electronics will spend upward of $250 million - not including land and academic programs - to build from scratch Washington International University. The school is scheduled to open in leased space as early as 1991 and is expected to have 2,000 Japanese and American students by 1993.
Outside Annapolis, the Yokohama Academy, which operates a string of schools of all levels in Japan, plans to invest more than $15 million to renovate a former friary into the International College of America, a two-year college for 200 Americans and Japanese specializing in international relations and business.
In Colorado, Oregon, Iowa, Washington state and Tennessee, other projects are starting this spring that will increase the number of Japanese students in the United States.
There are many reasons for the flood of deals. Many Asian experts said the Japanese admire the academic freedom of U.S. higher education institutions because it feeds creativity and innovation.
"Education is very expensive and very structured in Japan, and it makes sense to come here," said Ruri Kawashima, director of U.S.-Japanese programs for the New York-based Japan Society, a nonprofit education and cultural organization.
"It is the life-and-death desire that is exploding in Japan to internationalize themselves, most of all to speak and understand the culture of America," Kawashima said. "Coming here is still a dream."
Shoichi Okinaga, president of the 20,000-student Teikyo, agreed.
"The U.S. is the most important country in the world, and friendship and understanding between us is very important to us," he said. "We are long-sighted and see that this is the way to the international future."
For the American schools, the agreements with the Japanese institutions bring much-needed financial support and an ability to expose students to other cultures.
But some Americans express concern over Japan's new spending spree in the United States, accusing the Asian nation of using the same consumer approach to higher education as it did toward California banks and Manhattan real estate.
"It's like they are exporting students," one Japan expert said. "So they are buying up places here that they need to do it right."
"Teikyo means `take you,' you know, like takeover," joked a local man sipping coffee at a Salem restaurant. "We've been bought out."
Salem College officials prefer to use the word "merger" to describe the experiment in international education that the institution - and, in fact, the whole town - is about to embark on.
The signs of this global exercise are first apparent on U.S. 50 west of Interstate 79, where a new highway marker locates Salem-Teikyo University, an exotic name even in a state with towns called Hepzibah, Cutlips and Beelick Knob.
Salem, a rural town of 2,200, seems an unlikely place for grand schemes. While time may not stop here, it does move slowly - from the sleepy main street to the cottages and mobile homes that dot the surrounding ridges.
Most of the population makes its living at the glass factory up the road or at the university. Others work in Clarksburg, a small city 15 miles east, where there is a movie theater, a mall and two Chinese restaurants. Many of the young people have left, a migration that plagues most of West Virginia.
"It's got to be a boost, opening up jobs," said Salem Mayor Donna Stewart, who works as an executive assistant at the local funeral home.
Since the announcement, Stewart has fended off rumors such as an "invasion" of the Japanese students' families was imminent. Stewart is trying to arrange a town meeting with college officials to clear the air.
"I am a progressive, not a regressive, and I am prepared to welcome these kids with open arms," Stewart said. "Besides, the school was in deep financial straits, and its closing would have hurt the town financially, for sure, but most of all, morally."
Salem could use an economic boost.
"This was quite a place in its time, the streets were packed every weekend night," said Doris Moore, who has lived in Salem for 60 years and runs Moore's restaurant on Main Street. "Now there's not much, not too many jobs, so I think these Japanese coming here is a good thing."
And it's even better for Salem College, which was struggling along with 400 students and a capacity of 1,200. Teikyo paid off the college's mortgages and other debts, and now owns the college property and physical plant, which it has leased back to the university on a long-term basis.
Teikyo also established a $7.5 million endowment, and faculty salaries - the staff is completely American - have been increased 27 percent. The Teikyo Foundation will give $400,000 a year in scholarships to students from West Virginia and the Appalachian states.
"We are a debt-free institution and are now in the process of renovating, redoing and rebuilding, all with local contractors," Ohl said. "And we expect to spend $50 million to $60 million in the next few years in the area."
Ohl is working to ensure that Salem's programs will be accepted by regional accrediting agencies. There will be three semesters in the academic year, as in the Japanese system.
Americans will be required to take two semesters and the Japanese three, at a cost of about $5,000 per semester. The program will stress Asian studies for U.S. students and American studies for the Japanese, who will also take intensive English language classes.
Some changes caught the American students by surprise, including the elimination of football for more "lifetime" sports, such as tennis, racquetball, judo and karate.
While there was some grumbling over the decision to dump the gridiron, students seem excited about the new system.
"It's a positive step and it will make this place unique," said Richard Calhoun, 22, a junior from Florida. "Now instead of saying `What the heck is Salem?' my friends at home are asking me all about the place."
Okinaga said in an interview by telephone from Tokyo that he was attracted to Salem because of the solitude and low crime rate.
"The minute I saw it, I knew it would work, with the warmth of the people and beauty of the state," he said about his visits last year to West Virginia.
Okinaga has seen the attraction in other regions of the United States, too.
For $7 million, Teikyo bought the Loretto Heights campus from the 101-year-old Regis College near Denver to operate a joint program in Pacific studies. Teikyo runs the operation to recruit Japanese students, and Regis runs the educational programs.
EIE's project in Loudoun County, called the most costly and ambitious of all Japanese investments in U.S. college campuses, is set on 600 acres near Dulles International Airport.
The project will have 1.3 million square feet of space for eight residential halls, an administrative building, library, field house and other academic buildings.
"It is not Japanese-owned, but sponsored. `Owned' implies that it is a school for Japanese, but it's an American university and will be fully accredited with American faculty," said James DeFrancia, president of Los Angeles-based Lowe Enterprises Inc., a national developer hired for the project. "The idea just originates with the Japanese. It's where the seed money comes from."
But there is opposition to some of the proposals.
The International College of America, being developed in Annapolis by Yokohama Academy, is supported by Maryland and Anne Arundel County officials, but the secluded Winchester-on-the-Severn community is resisting the plan.
After hearing of Yokohama's plans, residents sued to block the campus, but a judge dismissed the case as premature because no building permits had been issued.
Lawyers and others working for Yokohama, with 16 campuses and 16,000 students in Japan, are readying those applications as well as academic and building plans for the 22-acre Augustian Friary it recently purchased.
About 200 American and foreign students will study English, American business theories and Western culture.
The first group of 50 arrives in May and will start classes in leased space at the University of Maryland campus at Baltimore and Catonsville Community College.
"We hope to open the campus in the spring of 1992," said France Pruitt, a Bethesda educator who will be president of the International College of America.
Some residents say the densely populated institution will pose a health and safety threat to the area, with its increased traffic and noise, and will depress property values. Some have also made anti-Japanese remarks at community meetings.
"It's just simply out of character with the residential neighborhood," said Milo Mason, community association president. "We welcome the college and its ideas, but in a more appropriate place in Anne Arundel County."
Pruitt is worried about the opposition, but said she will forge ahead, hoping to create a new basis of understanding between Japanese and Americans.
That's somewhat akin to the dreams of Salem-Teikyo's Ohl. "With Teikyo, we share a joint educational mission," he said. "We will have better students, more horizons. It is a time of raised expectations and rapid change."
Though change may come to the quiet rolling hills and foggy valleys of Salem, Doris Moore is going to take it slow. Moore, who had been up since 5 a.m. baking pies for her restaurant, looked around her place one recent morning and thought about adding to her menu of solidly American food - West Virginia fried chicken, mashed potatoes and meatloaf, all with plenty of gravy - with the prospect of the many Japanese headed her way.
"I might try sweet and sour pork, fried rice, pepper steak, and I'll give out chopsticks if they want," she said slowly and with a sly grin. "But I do draw the line with raw fish. No sushi."
by CNB