CHAPEL HILL -- UNC announced recently that rising senior Matt Kregor had won the David L. Boren Scholarship from the National Security Education Program. The federal government will provide Kregor with up to $20,000 to study Tajik and Russian languages in the Asian nation of Tajikistan.

The remoteness of the country and the few people interested in gaining expertise in the area made Kregor a prime candidate for the Boren award.

The one catch that made this news noteworthy to some is that, as a condition of the scholarship, Kregor must agree to use his knowledge to help with some aspect of national security after he graduates.

Other programs, such as the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program and the Bob Graham Intelligence Community Scholarship Program, fund students at UNC and other universities for specialized studies on campus with the intent of recruiting those students for service in the intelligence community.

And that rubs at least one Carolina professor the wrong way.

"On the one hand, students pay for their education in any number of ways," said Charles Kurzman, associate director for the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. "On the other hand, if we are serving some government intelligence function by training them, I would like to know."

Kurzman said he would like to know because, unlike NSEP scholarships, PRISP and Graham scholars do not have to reveal that they are on the government payroll to their teachers.

"It's the sort of cloak-and-dagger stuff that bothers a lot of us," said Kurzman. "To what extent are we helping students go out and do all sorts of dirty deeds that we would be embarrassed to have a hand in?"

Kurzman doesn't base his objections solely on being in the dark about students' objectives. He said he's also concerned about the possible use for some of the training.

"Are we training people to be good citizens of the world, or are we training them to manipulate the rest of the world?" said Kurzman.

Kurzman's view, however, is met with ample opposition.

"I don't accept the premise that if a professor finds out that they have a future CIA employee or intelligence community employee in their classroom, that that person should be barred from the information," said Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan.

Little said there's no reason to single out intelligence community scholarships from all other types of financial awards. "When you are sitting in a college classroom, you may not know what kinds of scholarships are handed out," she said. "You're not going to know about the kid sitting next to you and where he's getting the money to attend classes."

Anya Guilsher, a spokeswoman for the Central Intelligence Agency, insisted the scholarships are about future recruiting only.

"This isn't about sending students out to do anything whatsoever on campus other than to get smart, get a good education, study hard and acquire all the skills that are then going to be used to do the work that is facing us," Guilsher said.

Guilsher added that professors shouldn't feel they are being kept in the dark.

"In no way is anybody being used here," she said. "It's not about the professor. It's about the student getting an education."

The intelligence community is trying to provide an opportunity for the best education that serves a student's interest, Guilsher said. "These students who are receiving these scholarships are simply going out and getting the best possible education so they can bring their best minds to then work on intelligence problems," she said.

The intelligence community scholarships are in principal no different than the ROTC or NC Teaching Fellow scholarship programs.

Scott Swail, president of the Educational Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., supported the comparison. He said the future occupation of students is irrelevant to the caliber of training they should receive.

"[The intelligence community is] just providing an education no different than ROTC," he said. Swail suggested that similar criticism of ROTC would be that students are being paid by the government to get an education "to go kill people in war."

Swail is critical of professors who would single out intelligence community scholarships when few other funding sources for students receive criticism. "They've never cared about any other students' scholarships, why do they care about these ones?" he said.

Richard Kohn, director of the peace, war and defense curriculum at UNC, said there's no difference between such scholarships and some other types of government grants.

"I don't understand why this is particularly dirty money compared to the research money that we accept from a variety of different elements of the government that's subsidizing a lot of work," he said.

Kohn noted that professors have a mandate to teach their material to all students, not just to those who meet their own individual ideals or whose scholarly pursuits are similar to their own.

"We as teachers in the university take a very neutral stance towards the goals and ambitions of the people that take our courses and accept our training," Kohn said.

Kurzman seemed to agree.

"I have no idea what people are going to do with the information I present," Kurzman said. "I'd like to think that I will make people more enlightened and more tolerant, better world citizens, but you never know."

Kurzman said any objections he has to intelligence scholarships in no way compromises his academic integrity.

"I think there's such an interest in studying the area of the world I specialize in ... that the number of students who may be going into government positions is always going to be a tiny fraction of the number of students who are interested in taking courses on the subject," Kurzman said.

There may be more in the future, though. The Bush administration has increased the PRISP budget by $1 million for next year.