When PricewaterhouseCoopers this week gave its mixed assessment of their progress he challenged the government to set up a control to test its theory by giving half of the academies everything but the sponsor (money and freedoms) and comparing them with the sponsored ones after five years.
Half of the academy's board of guarantors are appointed by the university and half by the Italian government.
Last year, almost half the police academy graduates were minorities.
At a time when only 3percentt of students at the most selective colleges and universities come from the bottom-income quartile, and only 10percentt from the bottom half, the summer academy is part of a campaign by Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers, to make higher education more accessible to low-income students.
One former staff member, Mark Runkle, who worked for two and a half years at the academy, said he became skeptical of some practices, like taking children into the woods at night for psychological tests of will.
A year and a half out of the academy, Nicholson was recognized with a Bronze Star medal with a "V" device for his valor during the 1983 invasion of Grenada, and he went on to hold such prestigious jobs as aide to the commander of NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina and military assistant to the secretary of the Army.
Rais put in two and a half years at the academy in Jessore, studying aerodynamics and navigation and meteorology, collecting dozens of flight hours learning to pitch, roll, and yaw in Chinese-made PT-6A prop planes.
The academy gave half the physics prize to Roy Glauber "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence".
The fly-half came through the academy at Wasps and made his debut for the London club, at full-back, as a 17-year-old in 2004.
A third of comprehensives and half of academies reported that the amount of time dedicated to history lessons in year seven had reduced, while 13% of grammar schools reported the amount of time had increased.
