Kickbacks on college study-abroad programs?!
Columbia, Harvard, and Northwestern are among the 15 schools whose officials have been subpoenaed by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office. Authorities believe that the officials and study-abroad companies may have negotiated backroom deals that resulted in inflated rates for students. We recently posted about this news, and we have a handy checklist of questions for parents and kids contemplating study abroad.
With college tuition already sky high, what do you think of the emerging study-abroad scandal?
Feel free to post a comment below.
Cruise news: Celebrity says "Turf's up!"
In December, Celebrity Cruises launches the 2,850-passenger Celebrity Solstice. In what is being called an industry first, the top deck of the Solstice will be covered in real grass. The half-acre Lawn Club will include places for playing golf, bocce ball, and croquet. It will also have picnic spots. Here's an artistic rendering of what the Lawn Club will probably look like: The Solstice sets sail December 14 from Fort Lauderdale on a seven-night cruise to Puerto Rico, St. Kitts, and St. Maarten. An interior cabin room starts at about $800 per person, based on double occupancy (celebritycruises.com). If you’re looking to cruise, there are two other major ships to keep an eye out for this year: Royal Caribbean’s 3,600-passenger Independence of the Seas (set to debut in May) and Princess Cruises’ 3,100-passenger Ruby Princess (slated to launch in November). —Amy Chen CRUISE ADVICE Virgin cruiser Josh Dean took readers' tips on a trip to Alaska, to see just how helpful they were—and came back with some advice of his own. Read his story here. MORE BY AMY CHEN Report from the Balloon Festival.
New York's worst hotel
Budget Travel's February issue includes our list of TripAdvisor's Top 100 Best Value hotels around the world, with quotes from travelers who have actually stayed in them. It's the first major collaboration between a national travel magazine and TripAdvisor, the leading resource for hotel reviews. But what about the rejects, the dregs? What about the hotels at the very bottom of TripAdvisor's proprietary lists? In New York City, the most poorly-rated hotel (according to TripAdvisor's ranking system) would be the Hotel Carter. The 700-room hotel, on West 43rd St. in Times Square. Customer reviews include stories of bedbugs, prostitutes, and disgusting bathrooms. Hotel Carter overcame a second-worst hotel finish last year to plummet to dead last this year. It seems that Hotel Carter earned its "worst-place finish" on the strength of a story of a housekeeper who found the body of a woman under a bed in August, as reported on HotelChatter. You can read the reviews from customers of the Carter at TripAdvisor. Meanwhile in Britain, the worst performer was the Nanford Guest House, in Oxford. Following closely on its heels were four properties belonging to the same company (Britannia Group), which were voted by travelers as among the dirtiest places to stay in Britain. [via the London Telegraph. A local paper has the hotel's dismissive response to the bad reviews.] RELATED 100 Best Hotel Values for 2008: Budget Travel Powered by TripAdvisor New York at a Price That's Right What 99 Pounds Buys in London