Regional
Tightening the Screw on Overseas Medical Providers
The investigative branch of the U.S. Congress has called on the Department of Education [1] to start looking into issues of quality and value at for-profit foreign medical schools where American students use federal student loans to cover tuition expenses.
In a report [2] released in June, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommends that the department begin collecting data on student debt levels, graduation rates and licensure exam pass rates to better understand how federal funding is being spent at foreign medical schools. According to the GAO’s analysis, first-time pass rates for all three stages of the United States Medical Licensing Examination [3] (USMLE) were significantly lower for students using federally guaranteed loans at foreign medical schools than they were for students at public U.S. medical schools.
The findings of a focus group reveal that expected debt loads for foreign medical schooling ranged from $90,000 to $250,000 (in the United States, the median medical student loan debt was $155,000 in 2008), while there were mixed views on the quality of instruction and educational facilities. The GAO found that while 97 percent of U.S.-educated students passed the Step 1 licensure exam on the first try between 1998 and 2008, only 64 percent of student graduates from foreign medical schools passed.
During the 1997-98 academic year students borrowed $72 million to use at foreign medical schools. In 2007-8, they borrowed $315.1 million — growth of 338 percent. At the same time, the program offering the loans, the Federal Family Education Loan Program [4], grew at less than half that rate.
Based on its findings, the GAO made four recommendations to the Department of Education:
- Collect consumer information on student debt levels and graduation rates from foreign medical schools and make it publicly available.
- Require foreign medical schools to submit annual aggregate licensure exam pass rate data.
- Verify school-submitted data, possibly by verifying with the USMLE.
- Evaluate the potential impact of Congress’s newly enacted 75 percent pass rate requirement for participation in the federal student loan program.
– GAO [2]
June 28, 2010
New Ibero-American Ranking of Universities
The SCImago Research Group [5] recently published a new ranking of Ibero-American universities, based on their research productivity. The top 20 research institutions, according to findings based on scientific publications, are located in Spain (8), Brazil (7), Portugal (2), Argentina (1), Chile (1), and Mexico (1).
The leading research university in the group, in volume of academic publications, is the University of São Paulo [6], followed by the Autonomous University of México [7], University of Campinas [8] and two Spanish institutions, University of Barcelona [9] and Complutense de Madrid [10]. The ranking is available for download [11] in Spanish.
The SCImago group also published an inaugural ranking of world universities [12] last year. SCImago is a Spain-based research network “dedicated to information analysis, representation and retrieval by means of visualization techniques.”
– InsideHigherEd [13]
June 24, 2010
– GlobalHigherEd [14]
November 24, 2009
Brazil
University Enrollments Grow, but so do Dropouts
The number of students at Brazil’s universities has risen above five million for the first time, according to research by Semesp [15], an organization of higher-education institutes in the state of São Paulo. However, there has been a commensurate increase in the number of students who are abandoning classes. In São Paulo, a dropout rate that oscillated between 14 and 17 percent for the best part of the decade jumped to 20 percent in 2007 and 24 percent in 2008.
“Even though there is student financing, the lack of a policy to keep low-income students in university, combined with the difficulties these youngsters have in keeping up—thanks to the deficiencies in basic education—are some of the factors contributing to the rise in the dropout rate,” said Hermes Ferreira Figueiredo, president of Semesp, in a news release accompanying the data.
The number of institutions of higher education in Brazil has grown rapidly over the last decade, from 900 in 1997 to 2,495 last year. Most of the growth has come in the private sector, where numbers more than tripled, to 2,243 from 689. According to Semesp, the number of students enrolled in private universities rose by 188 percent in the decade ending in 2008 with the comparative rise in government-financed universities being just 58 percent. Overall, 75 percent of students are enrolled in private universities, compared with less than 66 percent in 1998.
Tuition costs have fallen by a third with the growth in supply as many universities lower their costs to try and lure students from Brazil’s lower classes. However, even with lower tuition fees, the dropout rate continues to rise. According to experts interviewed by The Chronicle, an inability to pay tuition is part of the reason, along with work commitments, family obligations and a loss of interest in the subject matter. The biggest reason, however, is poor academic preparation. Standards at Brazil’s primary and high schools are so low many students have trouble transitioning to higher education.
– The Chronicle of Higher Education [16]
July 7, 2010
Canada
Education Associations Unite to Improve International Recruiting Efforts
Canada’s major education associations have developed a consortium for international education marketing that is designed to strengthen their recruiting efforts overseas and to bring the best and brightest international students to Canada.
The agreement [17] to form the Canadian Consortium for International Education Marketing was signed in Ottawa in June by the five associations that represent the vast majority of Canada’s tertiary institutions. Canada is currently trying to position itself in the market for international students in the face of stiff competition from established English-language destinations such as Britain, the United States and Australia. The associations say that Canada needs to compete more efficiently. Several years ago, the Canadian government and provincial authorities began working with colleges and universities to develop a Canada brand strategy, and members hope this consortium will take that effort to a new level.
– AUCC [17]
June 29, 2010
York University and Other Canadian Universities Eye India Branch Campuses
York University [18] is reported to have struck a deal with an Indian developer to build a branch of its Schulich School of Business [19] five minutes from the airport of the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, which if completed, would make it one of the first foreign campuses to establish in India.
Canadian schools, which have long recruited heavily in such countries as China and the United States, are increasingly targeting India. But what Schulich is doing is new, made possible by an Indian law expected to pass later this year that would allow foreign universities to open campuses on Indian soil.
The schools’ new interest in India is shared by federal and provincial governments, which see the country’s booming economy as a perfect fit for their trade and innovation agendas, according to a recent article in The Globe and Mail newspaper. Since last fall, Prime Minster Stephen Harper and the premiers of Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan have visited India all with university presidents in tow. In June, Mr. Harper and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to encourage the continued development of “synergies” between Canadian and Indian universities.
Other Canadian universities that are active in India include the University of Waterloo [20], the University of Alberta [21], Concordia University [22], and the University of Western Ontario [23]’s Richard Ivey School of Business [24], among others. These schools mainly operate twinning arrangements with Indian partners, as current laws allow. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada [25] is aiming to coordinate efforts – and gain a better profile with Indian officials and media – by organizing a tour of the country this fall for a group of 15 Canadian university presidents.
The Schulich campus in Hyderabad, if completed, will form part of a 2,225-hectare development that includes a new airport, a hotel and convention center, and retail and recreation facilities. It is targeting 120 students in its first year and can accommodate up to 350, drawing from outside India as well. It will offer the same courses and have the same requirements as the school in Toronto, and will use Schulich faculty, who may choose to spend two or three years in the country.
Under the proposed Indian law, foreign schools cannot take profit out of the country, but those restrictions do not apply to executive MBA programs, traditional money-makers for business schools. Being one of the first foreign schools ready to build a campus when new legislation is passed later this year has put Schulich on the front pages of the Indian press, along with such U.S. schools as Virginia [26] and Georgia Tech [27], which also have plans for campuses.
– The Globe and Mail [28]
Top Indian Technology Students Wooed to Graduate Courses with Undergrad Internships
This summer more than a hundred Indian undergraduate students were in Canada to undertake internships at 14 Canadian universities. The students came through a program, Globalink, that is now in its second year and which seeks to attract talented undergraduate Indian students to graduate programs upon completion of their first degrees. The initiative is operated by the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) – a Canadian research network linking industry and international students with Canadian universities.
The students come mainly from India’s top-ranked and highly competitive Indian Institutes of Technology. They undertake three-month long research projects in computer science, engineering, mathematics and business before returning home. Last year, the pilot Globalink program was deemed so successful that British Columbia organizers alone decided to triple the number of top science and engineering students coming to intern with the province’s universities this summer. Globalink program organizer MITACS, reports that 85 percent of last year’s undergraduate interns indicated an interest in returning to Canada for their graduate studies.
– IANS [29]
July 21, 2010
Ecuador
New Law on Higher Education Passed
A new law on higher education was passed in early August by the Ecuadorean congress, after months of bitter dispute. The legislation is designed to better regulate universities while also bringing their programs in line with the country’s development needs. But it doesn’t go as far as President Rafael Correa had wanted.
Nonetheless, opponents of the bill, including the rectors of many of the country’s more than 70 institutions of higher education, fear the new law will rob them of hard-won university autonomy.
The original bill would have empowered President Correa, a former economics professor, to name the heads of a newly created National Council for Higher Education, a semi-autonomous body designed to oversee university administration and academics. Under a compromise bill, however, the directors of the council are to be chosen jointly by the president and university rectors.
Among other things, the new law would also require all professors and university presidents to hold advanced degrees, while a new academic accrediting agency would also be created. Private institutions of higher education would be required to get approval from the national council before setting tuition costs and to reserve 5 percent of their places for scholarship students. The law also seeks to increase enrollment, particularly among underprivileged students, by creating six new public universities and bringing two others under state control.
The new law would require a minimum of a master’s degree for professors, and starting in 10 years, all university presidents would be required to hold a Ph.D. Currently, Ecuador has only 250 full-time professors with doctorates, all from foreign institutions. Despite efforts over the past decade to strengthen the country’s graduate programs, there are still very few doctoral programs at Ecuadorean universities.
– The Chronicle of Higher Education [30]
August 4, 2010
Haiti
Higher Education in Haiti Six Months After the Quake
Of 32 colleges surveyed in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, 28 had their campuses destroyed in the earthquake and the other four were damaged, according to a recent assessment [31] by the Haiti-based Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development. [32] Only a few of Haiti’s colleges have resumed classes. With most of the country’s 159 colleges concentrated in the devastated capital, restarting classes has not been an option. Those that have reopened are housed in temporary facilities, reports Diverse Education.
Many U.S. colleges are eager to assist their Haitian counterparts but have been forced to put their proposed initiatives on hold, largely because the damaged campuses have not recovered enough to make much use of the offered international assistance. With the destruction of Haitian higher education being so widespread, some have argued for a complete remake of the system, which already had serious deficiencies before the earthquake. Advocates take a longer view, arguing the country will need college-educated people to fill leadership roles in government and business as well as produce research to guide official policymaking.
However, given other life-and-death priorities in Haiti, the prospect of mobilizing the resources needed to remake or even restore higher education is uncertain at this early stage in the rebuilding. While a handful of students have received scholarships to complete theirs studies abroad, difficulty locating, screening and matching students with English language skills to appropriate academic programs has meant that not many have arrived. And some argue that it is better to keep students in Haiti where they can help with relief efforts, while others point out that international student transfers may harm Haiti in the long run by exporting talented young people unlikely to return home after graduation.
Another idea for helping the colleges, providing coursework through distance-learning programs, has also stalled. Hardly any of the schools have the equipment or classrooms to receive online or teleconferenced courses. Quisqueya, a private university that reopened in April in digitally equipped tents, may be the only one in the country able to download courses from universities in other parts of the world.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to restoring higher education in Haiti, according to the Diverse Education article, is the rebuilding of the State University of Haiti [33], the country’s largest, which enrolled 15,000 of the country’s 40,000 students before the quake. Tuition is free at the university, which gets its entire budget from the government. The university’s rector, Jean Vernet Henry, has proposed consolidating its 11 schools on three regional campuses in the capital, the south and the north. The deans of the schools, however, have been pushing to resume courses as soon as possible—instead of taking the time to plan and implement a consolidation.
Those interested in remaking Haitian colleges, or even restoring them to their previous state, face a major obstacle in that higher education is not mentioned in Haiti’s official post-quake assessment of the country’s needs, although it is included in an overall estimate of $915 million that the government wants for rebuilding the educational system over the next two years. The Ministry of Education acknowledges that primary and secondary education are its priorities; however, Haiti’s future may rest on its ability to produce and retain educated citizens to lead the government and private sector. Given current priorities in Haiti, the prospect of mobilizing the resources needed to remake or even restore higher education is uncertain at this early stage in the rebuilding.
– Diverse Education [34]
June 17, 2010
Mexico
Government Pushes to Meet Demand for Tertiary Studies
Despite being one of Latin America’s richest nations, Mexico has one of the lowest rates of university participation in the region, as measured by its gross college enrollment rate (GER). The GER is a Unesco measure of the total number of college students, regardless of age, as a proportion of the number of traditional college-age students in the population. Mexico’s GER is just 28 percent, compared with 73 percent in Argentina, 60 percent in Panama, and an average of 37 percent for Latin America as a whole.
Faced with this reality, the Mexican government in recent years has tried to expand access to higher education. According to an announcement in May from Rodolfo Tuirán, under secretary for higher education, since December 2006, when Felipe Calderón became president, the government has created 75 institutions of higher education and helped 33 existing ones to enroll more students. He said the administration planned to establish 20 more institutions and to increase enrollment opportunities at 44 universities by the time Mr. Calderón’s term ends, in December 2012. Tuirán also points out that two-year institutions account for 60,000 of the 160,000 places created over the past year, with four-year programs making up the rest.
According to a study by the National Association of Universities and Higher Education Institutions, if it meets its goals, the government will have expanded enrollment at public universities by 628,000 in just six years. However, many academics say the government’s efforts aren’t good enough, calling for targets of 50 percent GER by 2018 to meet the demand for college degrees in Mexico, a goal that would require creating more than a million new places at universities over the next eight years.
But the biggest problem facing Mexican institutions—and those in Latin America in general— according to many, is the poor quality of their academic programs. As in many other countries in the region, there has been a mushrooming of low-quality private universities over the past two decades, as public universities have failed to keep up with increasing demand for degrees. These universities also tend to be duplicitous, churning out graduates in subject areas such as accounting and business administration, which helps to fuel unemployment concerns for those graduates.
– The Chronicle of Higher Education [35]
July 5, 2010
Peru
Beginning the Process of Building a National Quality Assurance Structure
In 2006, a new law requiring the creation of a national quality assurance system for higher education in Peru was passed, with implementation beginning in early 2008. Prior to the passage of the new law, the National Association of Rectors (ANR) began a program of university evaluation, while the professional association of doctors was already accrediting medical schools and certifying doctors for professional practice.
Now the National System for Evaluation, Accreditation, and Certification of Higher Education (SINEACE) – an autonomous national commission responsible for implementing the law – is in the process of creating the new quality assurance system. The law requires both institutional and program accreditation as well as the certification of professionals. The processes are voluntary with the exception of teacher-training programs and 13 programs in the health sciences.
The SINEACE is composed of three agencies — the IPEBA (Peruvian Institute for the Evaluation, Accreditation, and Certification of Basic Education) to evaluate primary and secondary education; the CONEACES (Council for Evaluation, Accreditation, and Certification of non-University Higher Education) to evaluate postsecondary, non-university education, and the CONEAU (National Council for University Evaluation and Accreditation) to evaluate university education.
The commissions of the SINEACE do not (by law) evaluate or accredit professionals, programs or institutions. Rather, the commissions are responsible for certifying and monitoring independent agencies to coordinate the external evaluations (with evaluators certified by the SINEACE) and pronouncing on accreditation and certification. However, these accrediting agencies do not yet exist.
– InsideHigherEd [36]
June 28, 2010
Puerto Rico
Adding Insult to Injury, Puerto Rico U Accreditor Places University on Probation
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education [37] in June placed on probation 10 of the University of Puerto Rico [38]‘s 11 campuses. Citing the Puerto Rico University [39] because of concerns about the impact of the longstanding, and recently settled, student strike on the campuses’ ability to meet the agency’s standards on governance and the appropriate length of educational offerings.
– Caribbean Business [40]
July 6, 2010
United States
College Enrollment Increase Highest in 40 years
Colleges and universities in the United States attracted record numbers of new students with more Hispanics finishing high school and young adults opting to pursue a higher education in lieu of searching for employment in a weak job market.
A study [41] released in June by the Pew Research Center [42] reveals that enrollments are becoming more ethnically diverse, while newly released government figures show that freshman enrollment surged 6 percent in 2008 to a record 2.6 million, mostly due to rising minority enrollment. That is the highest increase since 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War, when young adults who attended college could avoid the military draft. Almost three-quarters of the freshman increases in 2008 were among minority groups, of which the largest share was Hispanics.
Community colleges, trade schools, and large public universities accounted for much of the enrollment increases due to cheaper tuition fees and more open admissions policies. Still, the gains in minorities were seen at almost all levels of higher education, with white enrollment dipping to 53 percent at community colleges and 62 percent at four-year colleges.
California, the District of Columbia, Arizona, Alabama and Nevada had the largest freshman enrollment increases in 2008, with gains ranging from 11 percent to 21 percent. States registering declines included Minnesota, Nebraska, Delaware and Oklahoma, which dropped as much as 5 percent.
– Associated Press [43]
June 16, 2010
Study Suggests that US Graduates of International Medical Schools Perform Less Effectively than Graduates of US Schools or Foreign Graduates of International Medical Schools
Research [44] published in the August issue of the journal Health Affairs suggests that graduates of foreign medical schools —both non–U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens— perform as well as graduates of medical schools in the United States, as measured by mortality rates for patients who have suffered congestive heart failure or heart attack. However, the findings also reveal that the performance of graduates of foreign medical school who were non-US citizens at the time of graduation was superior to that of both graduates of US medical school and that of foreign medical graduates who were U.S. citizens. The latter group had the poorest performance of the three groups with regards to mortality rates.
The findings could be significant given the growing debate over the quality of medical care provided by doctors who are educated outside the United States — a group that makes up nearly 25 percent of physicians in the United States. The performance of foreign medical graduates who were U.S. citizens could also add to scrutiny of colleges outside the United States that serve many American students.
The study concludes that the lack of difference in mortality when comparing all international medical graduates with U.S. graduates speaks to the reliability of the U.S. certification process for international medical graduates. However, the report also notes that the difference in performance between non-U.S.-citizen and U.S.-citizen international graduates is striking, although not surprising given previous research. U.S.-citizen international graduates have lower scores on the cognitive portions of the licensing examination sequence, lower ratings from training program directors, and lower rates of specialty board certification, according to previous research cited by the Health Affairs study. The study suggests two potential reasons for the performance difference: variability in the quality of the medical schools that U.S.-citizen international graduates attend, and, to some degree, ability.
– Health Affairs [44]
August 2010
Immigration System Reports Growth in Foreign Enrollments
Universities and colleges in the United States saw growth in the number of foreign student enrollments in the most recent academic year, according to new visa data, despite expectations of a drop brought on by the global financial crisis.
Visa figures from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System [45] (SEVIS), issued in July [46] by the National Science Foundation [47] (NSF), shows foreign enrollments in American colleges increased by 3 percent in the fall of 2009, to 586,000. The NSF report provides the most up-to-date picture of international-student trends.
New enrollments in science and engineering grew by 4 percent, accounting for a steady share of the foreign-student population at 44 percent. However, the number of first-time international students in graduate-level science and engineering programs dropped 2 percent from 2008 to 2009, suggesting that there could be smaller increases in foreign graduate enrollments in future years, the report’s authors note.
Although about equal numbers of all foreign students are in undergraduate and graduate programs, graduate students far outnumber undergraduates in science and engineering. The number of first-time international students in undergraduate science and engineering programs climbed 5 percent in the last academic year. Overall, the enrollment of foreign science and engineering students increased from China, India, the Middle East, and Africa, but there were dips in students from Europe, Central and South America, and Canada. Numbers of first-time international science and engineering students, most notably from India, declined.
– National Science Foundation [48]
July 2010
UC Berkley Sees Hispanic Enrollments Drop, while Non-resident Enrollments Spike
Facing budget shortfalls, the University of California at Berkeley [49] late last year announced plans to more than double the number of higher-fee paying students it admits from outside California; a move that has been blamed in part for this fall’s planned enrollment drop of 12 percent among Latino freshmen versus last fall. Nonresident students are overwhelmingly white or Asian, and about 23 percent of next year’s freshman class is expected to come from out of state, compared to just 11 percent a year ago.
In a news conference, Berkeley’s chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau, said that the drop in Latino students was not as disproportionate as it may seem, citing a large number of Latinos who were admitted with this fall’s class but will enroll in the spring. He also said the inclusion of Latino transfer students would make the decline much less significant.
In contrast to Berkeley, the number of Latino students rose steadily across the broader University of California [50] system, including increases on six of the eight other undergraduate campuses. The proportion of white students system-wide dropped to a record-low 27 percent.
– The Chronicle of Higher Education [51]
July 14, 2010
A Budget Online University gains Some Traction in an Age of Austerity
StraighterLine [52] was conceived and developed by a Harvard University-educated entrepreneur who believes that undergraduate courses in the United States, especially basic foundation ones, are grossly overpriced.
Much like its budget airline counterpart, StraighterLine offers no-frills courses designed by former professors at cut-rate prices. They are provided at students’ convenience and can be transferred towards degrees at other institutions. A majority of the offerings are basic foundation courses required by most universities, including accounting, algebra, English composition, macroeconomics and statistics. Each course costs just $39 plus $99 a month until completion. They are delivered online and feature collaborative study groups and live tutorials, with advisers available via email.
Times Higher Education reports that the model is growing quickly, with StraighterLine saying that less than six months after commencing full operations its current enrollment equaled that of a small university.
In its first step towards internationalization, it has just announced a partnership with Thompson Rivers University [53] in Canada.
In an interview with the Times, chief executive officer and founder Burck Smith contends that, “universities aren’t spending more than $100 a student to deliver these introductory courses, yet they are charging up to $2,500,” adding that StraighterLine is “providing the same or better courses: we are just pricing closer to the actual cost of delivery.”
The model allows students to get to a level equivalent to that achieved after a full year of basic coursework at a traditional university, but much more quickly and at a lower cost, Mr. Smith claimed. He estimated the cost to be about $1,000 on average, compared with more than $50,000 at an elite private university in the US when living costs are taken into account.
While the success of the model depends on the transferability of credits toward mainstream university and college programs, the online institution has already partnered with 14 accredited institutions [54] – including conventional private institutions such as Assumption College in Massachusetts [55], public universities such as Fort Hays State University [56] in Kansas and online providers including Western Governors University [57] – that have agreed to accept the company’s credits.
A team of academics assigned to review StraighterLine’s programs by the American Council on Education [58], has also recommended that accreditation be given to its courses, although its decision is not binding.
– Times Higher Education [59]
July 15, 2010