COLLEGE PROFESSOR VISITING SWEDEN ON RECRUITING TRIP; FOREIGN STUDENTS BRING MONEY.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Next month, when College of the Canyons professor Bruce Pelkey travels to Sweden to recruit students, that country will be chilly and snow-covered, averaging only four hours of daylight and 20 hours of nighttime.

He's guessing it won't be too hard to sell higher education in sunny Southern California to the Scandinavians, even if College of the Canyons is a two-year institution miles from the Pacific Ocean.

Campus administrators are betting that Pelkey's 17-day trip, budgeted at $2,984 for air fare, lodging, meals and expenses, will pay for itself if he convinces just a handful of Swedes to come halfway around the world to study in the Santa Clarita Valley.

That's because students from foreign countries pay 10 times as much in fees as do California residents. Whereas local students pay $13 per unit, their international counterparts are charged $133 per unit at College of the Canyons, and often more at other community colleges across the state. And, unlike American students, they must sign up for 12 units per semester to comply with requirements of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

``This is the first time (College of the Canyons) is taking a trip abroad to recruit students,'' Pelkey said. Next year, the part-time history professor will join a group of recruiters from 30 community colleges on a swing through Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan. ``We'll be the only school from California recruiting those students,'' he added.

``We don't want to target any one country. We're looking for ethnic diversity, but we're also looking for cultural diversity.''

Last spring, College of the Canyons established an international students center on campus - with Pelkey as director of the program - to serve the growing ranks of foreigners who have come here to study. The center assists the students with everything from immigration issues to homesickness and problem adjusting to their adopted culture, he said.

There are 77 international students enrolled at College of the Canyons, one-third of them from Japan and Korea alone, Pelkey said.

Most of the Asian students come from the Tokyo and Seoul areas. Other students hail from Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, England, France, Germany, Spain, Israel, Lebanon, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia. ``Last time I counted, we had more than 30 countries represented,'' Pelkey said.

A year ago, COC had just 43 foreign students, he noted. COC's lone Swedish student last year was Magnus Carlsson. ``He was an excellent golfer, one of the best in the state. He ended up getting a scholarship to San Diego State,'' Pelkey said.

Still, College of the Canyons has a long way to go to match the foreign enrollment at Santa Monica City College, which stood at 2,294 in the fall 1996 semester. That figure accounted for 9 percent of the school's enrollment.

According to the chancellor of the California Community College system, there are 19,200 international students enrolled at the state's 106 campuses.

A large number of those international students at Santa Monica are Swedes. ``Their biggest population of Europeans are (students) from Sweden - which is kind of funny, because Sweden has 8.7 million people, yet it sends more international students, especially to California and Florida, than any other European country,'' Pelkey said.

Years ago, when he was in college, Pelkey studied for a master's degree at Uppsala University just north of Stockholm, ``the oldest university in all of Scandinavia,'' he said. There, he picked up the language and met his wife of 26 years.

As a college recruiter, he will have the advantage of not only knowing that country well, but also being able to talk to the students in their native tongue. ``I speak fluent Swedish,'' Pelkey said.

He is scheduled to address about 1,600 high school and trade school students during his visit to six suburban Swedish cities: Allingsas, Karlstad, Degerfors, Kristinehamn, Vasteras and Karlskoga.

Pelkey said Swedes begin learning English in elementary school, and as a nation they place a high value on education. ``They're a country where there's not extreme poverty or extreme wealth. There's a big middle class, and they look at (colleges) overseas as a way of getting their education,'' Pelkey said.

``If they come and have training in the United States, it's well thought of (back home), frankly.''

Besides, he said, Swedes find the cost of living in California similar to that of their homeland.

The resemblance ends there. Sweden is about six hours' drive south of the Arctic Circle, Pelkey said. Mild weather, therefore, becomes California's chief selling point.

``The sunshine factor is really important,'' Pelkey said. ``I'll be there in the dead of winter, when they'll only get sunshine from about 10 in the morning until about 2 in the afternoon,'' he said. ``It's a great time to sell California sunshine.''