Regional

United States to Latin America: “Send Us Your Students”

U.S. Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, and seven university leaders traveled to Chile and Brazil this month, meeting with reporters and education officials. Seemingly, another key element of the trip was to assure the continent’s students that American universities still welcome them. According to Spellings, the U.S. wants Brazilian and Chilean “students to know that American higher education is open for business to students from our neighbors.”

Across Latin America and throughout the world, the number of students exploring the higher education offerings of the U.S. has dropped significantly since the events of September 11, 2001. The tightening of visa requirements and security procedures, and the perception by foreign students that they might not be well received in America are among the factors that have scared off potential students from around the globe. In countries like Brazil, where rapidly increasing numbers of students are seeking opportunities in higher education, many are reticent to engage in what many have called a “cumbersome” process to obtain a student visa from the U.S. Embassy. Other countries with large international student populations at their universities, such as Canada, Australia, France, and the UK have stepped up their recruiting efforts in Latin America to attract the student that might have previously studied in the U.S.

In order to address the concerns of Latin American students, U.S. officials throughout the world have worked to streamline the student visa process. The trend of falling international enrollments has been reversed, but there is still much room for improvement, according to Spellings. In 2006, the U.S. only awarded 5,881 visas to Brazilian students – a number that is still much lower than the peak of 12,325 in 2001.

– Associated Press
Aug. 21, 2007

Canada

Does Toronto Need a New University?

According to the president of the University of Toronto, David Naylor, the city may need another university within 15 years to handle rapidly escalating student numbers. He says universities are trying to cope with a surge in students driven by the in-flow of immigrants and an appetite for higher learning. Naylor says Toronto-area universities are so strapped for space they may even form a consortium to run a new sort of feeder university. In such a facility, says Naylor, students could earn a bachelor’s degree then switch to an older university to prepare for graduate studies.

It’s one of the ideas being developed by the universities of Toronto, Ryerson, York and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Another idea being considered by the university chiefs is to have a university outside the Toronto area opening a satellite campus in the city to take some of the undergraduate load.

– The Sault Star
August 1, 2007

New Non-Profit, Private University Open for Business

Quest University Canada welcomed its first class of students in August. The Squamish, B.C. institution is unique in that it is Canada’s only non-profit, private, secular university. Students from 14 different countries form the inaugural class, half of whom are Canadian. Quest is modeled on small, private U.S. liberal arts colleges, which focus exclusively on undergraduate education.

There has been considerable controversy over the introduction of private universities into Canada, especially after allegations by the Chinese government, among others, that some private universities are basically fly-by-night operations.

– Macleans
August 16, 2007

Cuba

No Debt for U.S. Medical Students Graduating in Cuba

Eight American students graduated in June from a Cuban medical school after six years of studies fully funded by Fidel Castro’s government. They plan to return home, take board exams for licenses to practice, and provide cheap health care in poor neighborhoods. The program is part of Castro’s project to send thousands of Cuban doctors abroad to tend to the poor in developing countries, such as Venezuela and Bolivia, and train tens of thousand of medical students from developing countries in Cuba. The ailing Cuban leader, 80, did not attend the graduation for 850 students from 25 countries at Havana’s Karl Marx Theater. There are currently 88 Americans studying medicine in Cuba. The first to graduate two years ago was Cedric Edwards, who is now working at Montefiore Hospital in New York City’s Bronx borough.

– Reuters
July 24, 2007

United States

Community Colleges Increasingly Active in Recruiting Overseas

Community Colleges in the United States are becoming increasingly proactive when it comes to recruiting overseas, according to a recent article by InsideHigherEd, even without significant budget incentives to do so. Anecdotal evidence suggests that in the last two or three years there has been a significant increase in the number of two-year schools sending representatives to recruitment affairs abroad.

According to the most recent Open Doors report by the Institute for International Education, approximately 15 percent of all international students in the United States study at community colleges, with an overall increase in total enrollments of 17.8 percent since 1999 to a total of 83,160 in 2006. Of that number, 52 percent hail from Asian countries with Japan, Korea, Mexico, China and Taiwan as the top five sending countries.

Community colleges have become particularly attractive to international students in recent years as industry groups and institutional representatives have increasingly touted the financial benefits of working towards a university degree via the 2+2 transfer route that enables community college students to move into four-year universities upon completion of two years at community college. Other pulls for international students include small class sizes and a teaching-oriented faculty, intensive English language learning programs, and a much lower admissions bar. High scores on the Test of English as a Foreign Language often aren’t necessary, as many colleges offer intensive language classes that students with weak English skills must take prior to enrolling in credit-bearing courses.

However, due to the costs associated with recruiting and hosting international students, it is still a minority of the approximately 800 community colleges certified to host exchange students that recruit abroad. Other challenges for community colleges include a lack of awareness abroad of their existence and offerings; a lack of traditional campus conveniences at community colleges, including housing; low scores on the prestige scale; and minimal brand-name recognition.

– InsideHigehrEd
August 1, 2007

Study Urges Caution when Comparing Indicators in International Education

Statistics are used widely by those trying to influence government policy and budgetary allocations, and the international education arena is no exception. So it is that international comparisons of higher education by U.S. educators are often misleading, especially when downplaying the strength of math and science education and research, because more often than not perceived weakness is used to encourage action and spending by Congress, according to a recent report.

“Apples and Oranges in the Flat World,” a booklet released in July by the American Council on Education, offers guidance on how to make international comparisons, how to explain the limitations of those comparisons, while also urging caution when comparing international education statistics. Because different credentials and institution types have different meanings in different countries, one should be sure to compare like with like. For example, a Chinese engineering graduate from a three-year diploma or training program will not possess the same skills as his or her peer in the United States who has graduated from an accredited four-year university program. However, oft-cited studies revealing dramatically higher numbers of engineering graduates in China count them as one and the same, according to a 2005 study by Duke University researchers.

The study also warns researchers to take note of historical perspective. While education spending or university enrollments may have increased dramatically in certain developing nations when compared to more developed nations, one also has to be cognizant of starting points for those comparisons. For example, Hungary has seen a 132 percent increase in higher education participation rates (enrollment rates adjusted for population growth) from 1995 to 2003. For the United States, the change was an increase of only 5 percent. But American adults are more than twice as likely as their Hungarian counterparts to have spent time in higher education.

– American Council on Education
July 2007

61 College and University Presidents Vow to Boycott U.S. News Ranking

Sixty-one college and university presidents have signed a letter pledging not to participate in the “reputational” part of the U.S. News & World Report rankings, and not to use rankings in promotional materials. The letter, being circulated by the Education Conservancy, started off in May with 12 presidents.

– Education Conservancy
August 2007

Harvard Retains Top Spot on Shanghai Ranking

Shanghai Jiaotong University released its annual ranking of the world’s top universities in August, and once again found Harvard to be the best. The ranking, which has a bias toward research indicators, placed a total of eight U.S. universities in the top ten with Britain’s Cambridge and Oxford securing fourth and tenth places respectively. More than half (54) of the top 100 are located in the United States, 31 in Europe and nine in the Asia Pacific region. Of China’s universities, Tsinghua topped the rankings in 167th and Peking came in second, or 228th overall.

This fifth annual ranking exercise is based on six broad criteria covering the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel and other academic prizes or having their research work published in top academic journals. More than 2,000 universities were assessed with the top 500 cited on the list.

– Shanghai Jiaotong Institute of Higher Education
August 2007

USA vs. G-8

The National Center for Education Statistics released its annual report, ‘Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-8 Countries: 2006’. The federal report compares the U.S. education system with the education systems of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom on a range of indicators related to educational attainment by citizens and educational investment by each government.

On the positive side for U.S. education, the nation’s institutions of education remain the most attractive destination for the world’s students, at a time when the number of people seeking higher education outside their own borders grew to 2.7 million in 2004, the year examined in the NCES study. Of those 2.7 million, about two-thirds were enrolled in the G-8 countries, and nearly a quarter of those, 22 percent, were enrolled in the United States. The United Kingdom followed with 11 percent, Germany with 10 percent, and France 9 percent. As a percentage of the student body, however, the U.S. it still underrepresented by international students when compared to its peers. In the United Kingdom 16 percent of all students are foreign, 11 percent in Canada, France and Germany. International enrollments at U.S. institutions of higher education account for just 3 percent of the total. Per capita spending was much higher in the United States than in other G-8 countries.

Results on indicators were less encouraging for US educators and students. A mid-pack ranking was achieved for the proportion of the population with a college degree (39 percent of 25 to 64 year-olds). And in the sciences a smaller proportion of the “first university degrees” awarded in the United States in 2004 (17 percent) were in science, mathematics and engineering related fields than was true than in any of the other G-8 countries.

– NCES
August 14, 2007

Rankings, Rankings … and more Rankings

A new academic year, a new rankings season and new ranking systems. Joining the fall season of rankings gauging top colleges, best party schools and highest squirrel counts are a new ranking exclusively for community colleges, a sector enrolling 40 percent of all tertiary-level freshmen, and an output-based ranking for Ph.D programs.

Published by the Washington Monthly, the community college survey ranks colleges using data from different categories of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (85 percent of the overall score) and graduation rates (15 percent), data sources that have been criticized by many industry professionals as problematic. Nonetheless, the top 5 community colleges according to the Washington Monthly are:

1. Atlanta Technical College,
2. Cascadia Community College (Washington State),
3. Southern University at Shreveport,
4. Southwestern Community College (North Carolina),
5. Hazard Community and Technical College (Kentucky).

The Monthly also released its third annual ranking of four-year colleges, with a strong bias in its evaluation criteria toward colleges that promote social mobility, thus producing dramatically different results from US News’ top ten which has traditionally been dominated by private schools. The top five: Texas A&M, UCLA, Berkeley, UC San Diego, Penn State.

In the research world, a paper published in Political Science & Politics has debunked the belief that there is a direct relationship between the general reputation of a department and its success in placing newly minted Ph.D’s (in political science). The output-oriented (job placement) survey found that reputational surveys were often well off the mark for doctoral programs. The approach was to take the Ph.D.-granting programs and see which ones placed the most new Ph.D. graduates (from 1990-2004) in faculty jobs at Ph.D.-granting programs. Recognizing that not all departments that award Ph.D.’s are alike, their formula gave more weight to those that were more successful at placing more of their students in top departments. (Details on the methodology, along with results, may be found here.) And then they applied a per capita factor on graduate programs, so that departments placing many students just because they were large wouldn’t do as well as small departments where most students were getting great jobs.

That final weighted analysis showed dramatic ups and downs for some institutions. The University of Rochester was ranked 11th in the last National Research Council analysis of political science departments, but its per capita record at placing students in top departments is 4th. Other departments significantly exceeding their NRC rankings include Duke University (14th in NRC, but 7th at placing new Ph.D.’s), Northwestern University (22nd in NRC and 9th in placing Ph.D.’s), Michigan State University (26th in NRC and 17th in job placement), and Emory University (36th in NRC and 19th in job placement). Of course other universities have better reputations than records at placing new Ph.D.’s. Yale University was ranked 3rd by the NRC, but its track record with new Ph.D.’s landed it 12th. Princeton was ranked 7th by NRC, but 13th when it comes to jobs for its new Ph.D.’s. The University of Wisconsin at Madison was ranked 10th by the NRC, but 35th in placing Ph.D.’s. The University of Minnesota 13th vs. 32nd.

– InsideHigherEd
August 20, 2007
– InsideHigherEd
August 21, 2007

International Graduate Admissions Continue to Rise

According to a new survey released in late August by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), the number of international students who received admissions offers from U.S. graduate schools increased 8 percent between 2006 and 2007. This is the third year in a row that this number has grown, after a few sharp years of decline post 9-11.

The CGS survey also reports that nearly 30 percent of graduate schools have established joint or dual degree programs with international universities, and almost 25 percent plan to establish new collaborative degrees in the near future. More partnerships are with European universities than with those of any other region, although collaborative degree programs have also been established with China, India, and other countries.

– Council of Graduate Schools
August 2007

Uruguay

Students Take to Streets, Demand Education Reform

Students recognizing the anniversary of the August 14, 1968 death of student leader Líber Arce, marched in the streets of Montevideo protesting the current state of Uruguayan education. Members of student organizations such as the Confederacy of Uruguayan University Students (FEUU) participating in the protest demanded that a minimum 6 percent of the nation’s Gross National Product be allocated towards education and that lawmakers reform the national law governing education.

Some Uruguayan political leaders attended the marches in an attempt to demonstrate to students their commitment to higher education. Rector of the Universidad de la República, Rodrigo Arocena, addressed the crowd and warned that it would be very difficult for the government to allot the proposed 6 percent and that a compromise of 4.5 percent seemed more realistic.

– El Espectador
Aug. 14, 2007