If finding the right college is a matchmaking process, according to some, then early decision is a troublesome “arranged marriage.” High school students are back in class this week, and some are already grinning. They learned weeks ago that they’ve already made it in to their top choice school. Those still waiting at the altar, however, are scrambling to send out “other” applications, and they’re not the only ones frustrated with the process.

Some college officials say that a system that was meant to make life easier for students and schools has evolved into an academic arms race that benefits the privileged and locks kids into premature commitments. Now Yale’s president says he wants out.

Guests:

Richard Levin, President of Yale University

William Fitzsimmons, Dean of Admissions at Harvard University

James Fallows, national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly

and Anne McGrath, editor of the U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings.

It is a lawless, windswept, cold and mountainous land. A place where soldiers, mercenaries and guerrilla fighters, still hide in distant valleys and remote caves. And this is not Afghanistan. This is the Balkans: Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro. A part of the world that has fallen below the West’s radar. A place where crippled economies and a lack of law and order rear converts to a criminal lifestyle, where discontent combines with scant opportunity to turn young men with nothing better to do into fanatics.

Guests:

Misha Glenny, author of “The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers 1804 — 1999″

Ambassador James Pardew, US Envoy to the Balkans

and Susan Woodward, Professor of Political Science at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York.

It’s simple, really. There’s a small, powerful group who knows a lot more than you do. These people are driven by lust for power, or money, or by pure evil, and “they” are the ones controlling events. All kinds of events, and very little happens by chance. That, according to classic conspiracy theory, is how the world is run. One problem: there’s plenty of debate over who “they” are. Could be the CIA, the Catholic Church, the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateralists, Jews, Masons, the aliens who landed in Roswell, or a chilling combination of the above, which I could tell you about, but then I’d have to kill you.

It would all be kind of funny, except that conspiracy theories can have consequences, moving from fuzzy thinking to violent action.

Guests:

Robert Alan Goldberg, author, “Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America”

Yusuf Agha, information consultant, wrote article, “Osama Gump,” for CounterPunch

and Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates

and John McManus, president of the John Birch Society.

If you’re talking war in South Asia, forget about Afghanistan. The border to watch is the one between Pakistan and India: Kashmir. Amidst the largest military buildup in 30 years, diplomats are out, and India’s parliament has OK’ed war powers for its Prime Minister. Yet here in the first days of 2002, there’s perhaps more hope than pessimism. Pakistan is cracking down on fundamentalist groups, even suggesting it may withdraw support for Muslim insurgents in Kashmir.

India remains suspicious, but as soldiers fire mortars and machine guns across the border, officials from the two nations will attend a summit in Kathmandu this week. India and Pakistan: nuclear powers under massive international pressure to make nice.

Guests:

Ambassador Dennis Kux, author of India and the United States: Estranged Democracies, 1941-1991, and The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000, Disenchanted Allies, currently a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center

Sir Mark Tully, former BBC India correspondent, currently a freelance journalist based in Delhi

and Ayesha Jalal, Professor of History at Tufts University.