By Susan Snyder
Inquirer Staff Writer
Terese Schireson was looking for a large college in an urban setting with substantial numbers of international students that wouldn't force her to go deep in debt.
The Rosemont native found the perfect fit in beautiful, cosmopolitan Montreal.
She'll graduate in the spring from McGill University - where tuition, fees, and room and board run about $21,000 a year - debt-free and with a degree in Hispanic studies and Italian.
"The quality of education I'm getting is the same as a school where I would pay $50,000 a year," said Schireson, 21, a graduate of the private Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia. "I feel like people don't realize that this is just a few hundred miles north."
More American students are finding worth in Canada's higher-education system, where costs are lower than many private schools in the United States and in some cases similar to costs at flagship state schools, such as Pennsylvania State and Rutgers Universities.
During the last decade, the number of American students at Canadian universities has more than doubled, says the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, to 8,200 in 2007-08, up from 3,312 a decade ago.
The Canadian Embassy in Washington expects there will be as many as 10,000 this year, making the United States the second-largest exporter of students to Canada behind China.
Canadian colleges are recruiting more aggressively; last week they launched a five-city tour in Baltimore.
For the first time, they're coming as a group to the Philadelphia area. Seventeen universities, including the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia, will hold an event today in King of Prussia.
The recruiting effort involves an increasing number of schools. Twelve years ago, only 10 Canadian colleges enrolled 50 or more U.S. students and only three had 100 or more, according to the Canadian Embassy. Now, 31 schools have 50 or more and 14 of them have 100 or more.
"There is a recognition that this is an important market for our universities, given the proximity," said Pari Johnston, director of international relations at the Canadian college association's Ottawa office. "Our universities can offer a high quality, affordable education to American students."
The Canadian Embassy, which is organizing the recruiting fairs, targeted the Philadelphia area because "we thought it seemed like a good market with a lot of intelligent students," said Alexander Leipziger, program associate.
The fairs - open to parents, students, and guidance counselors - will also be held in Boston, Minneapolis, and Stamford, Conn.
The higher-education system in Canada is largely publicly funded. The government covers about 60 percent of operational costs for the country's 94 public universities.
The U.S. higher-education system is much larger, with 2,500 four-year, nonprofit universities. Canada sends 28,000 students to U.S. colleges.
One of the biggest challenges Canadian universities face is lack of knowledge about them, said David Hawkins of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. But as the United States becomes more global, he expects students increasingly will look for options outside the country.
"There still is an information or understanding gap to be bridged, but I'd say that gap is getting smaller," he said.
Even though international students pay more than Canadians, cost can be the attraction.
The University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto are among the most expensive in Canada, with tuition and room-and-board costs topping $30,000, but are still cheaper than a private school such as Villanova, where annual costs are pushing $50,000. Other, lesser-known Canadian schools are well under $20,000.
Canadian colleges also offer need-based and merit aid, although not as much as universities in the United States. And U.S. families can use college-savings plans and get federal student loans.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
What does the SAT Test?
Here are recent excerpts from The Answer Sheet by Valerie Strauss, The Post's new education blog.
Edward Carroll takes tests for a living. To be precise, he takes the SAT, the dreaded college admissions test. Over and over.
The 38-year-old has taken every SAT made available over the past decade by its owner, the nonprofit College Board. Usually he takes it alongside high-schoolers on Saturday mornings.
He has also analyzed another decade's worth of tests.
"People think I'm crazy," he said, but his job depends on his diligence: He is a standardized test expert and tutor at the Princeton Review, an education and test-prep company.
That means he is also an expert on the ACT, the other major college entrance exam, owned by the nonprofit education and workforce-development organization ACT. Most schools use these exams to inform their admissions decisions, and just about all of them that do accept the results of the SAT or the ACT.
For those high school students now starting the grueling admissions process, Carroll offers the following from conversations with The Answer Sheet on e-mail and on the phone:
Q. What does the SAT actually test? What does it say about someone who takes it?
The SAT, more than anything else, shows how well you take the SAT. It is NOT a measure of a student's raw math or verbal ability. The College Board itself does not claim that the SAT predicts subject skills, but rather that it is a predictor of performance in college (along with the rest of a student's application).
Personally, I think it also filters out students who can't perform quickly. The test is rigidly and tightly timed. It is very, very difficult to finish each section and the [College Board] knows it. They design it that way so that they can assure a nice range of scores to the colleges for comparison.
So it doesn't tell much of anything important?
It is a very flawed test if you expect it to reveal much about student content skill or personal study and performance ability.
Who does well on it?
The SAT puts students in a pressurized environment, and students who perform well in testing situations will excel. Everyone knows a story of a slacker student who doesn't work hard in school and does well on the SAT. . . . On the SAT, if you're brilliant and slow, you'll get a very average score.
Why is it so difficult?
It's not, really. The questions are not straightforward.
Explain.
Each test is equally tricky. The simplest example of that is that it often asks "What is x + 1?" when students have to do lots of calculations to solve for x. Then, as they do throughout math class in school, they choose the value of x that they found. To put it another way, they do everything correctly in solving, then circle the wrong answer (because the trap answers will always be there)! Thus, they get the question wrong, but NOT because they didn't know what they were doing.
Is the ACT more indicative of a student's ability than the SAT?
In short, yes. It tests what students learn better than the SAT. It has its own flaws, but what it purports to do it does better than the SAT.
What are the flaws?
It is hard to finish. . . . It has to have students fall into a predictable range. It is standardized. . .
And you always have to be suspicious of the easy answer no matter what test you are taking. These tests are multiple-choice. They have to have the answer on the page, so they make the other answers as attractive as possible but specifically wrong. Students have to eliminate an obviously wrong answer and get it down to 3 or 2.
Any truth to the notion that one SAT given each year is harder than the rest?
The SAT does not change from test to test. It is a myth that there is a better day or month in which to take the test. This is a standardized test. It does not change, and the scores from one test are equivalent to scores on another test. Despite our criticisms of the SAT over the years, the College Board is very good at one thing -- making its tests the same every time. It's nonsense to think otherwise, but this myth persists.
The addition of a written essay in the SAT test in 2005 didn't change things?
The "old" one changed in March 2005. In a nutshell, it didn't change very much. They took their old SAT Writing test and tacked it onto the SAT -- that's how it got an essay. The rest of it (slight math changes and elimination of Analogies) had very little effect on the overall student experience test, despite what you may have heard. The biggest effect on students is that it is now longer -- 3 hours 45 minutes -- much more than that if you include [administrative] and break times.
Why would someone take the tricky SAT if the ACT is more straightforward?
The SAT does work for some students. . . . Some of the material on the ACT is at a higher level than the SAT. . . . I can tell SAT kids, you will never see a question with really advanced geometry.
Let's talk about test prep.
In general, our approach to the SAT is that we analyze it for unintended patterns, then tell students what they are. We don't pretend to teach more than that. This is one of the reasons that [the Princeton Review] has received criticism in the past. But we do raise scores.
Some people say test prep can only raise scores a little. Others say it can help a lot. What do you think?
It can help a lot. It depends on the point at which you start.
You've taken scores of tests. How do you do on them?
I do pretty well, but I'm human, so I can still make a mistake. . . . I can tell you this. I have gotten a perfect score in each section but not on the same test.
The kids must wonder about you when you take the SAT.
The high school kids think . . . I'm a little slow and I'm just getting to college.
Do you finish the SAT in the allotted time?
I can, but I have a much better vocabulary than your typical 16-year-old. . . . Your average adult who has gone through high school will do pretty well on the verbal section and will do less than they think they will in math, because the Pythagorean theorem doesn't come up much in their daily lives.
Why do kids always say, "Nothing," when parents ask them what happened in school?
Not all of them do. Some are chatty and tell their parents every last detail about who did what to whom at school.
But it is true most would rather not. A survey by a British government agency on this very issue was released this year. The conclusions, as reported by the BBC:
-- 82 percent of parents wished they had more information about their children's school life.
-- 16 percent of children volunteered information about their day at school.
-- Nearly 25 percent of children felt like their parents "were hassling" them by asking about school.
An informal survey conducted by The Answer Sheet -- in which several dozen children from elementary to high school were questioned -- showed that most of the kids don't want to talk about school for the same reason:
After eight hours in school and more time doing homework, they are sick of school and don't want to talk about it. You are probably asking your kids about school at dinner or even later. They are tired, and their focus is away from schoolwork. They don't want to go back there until they have to.
My friend Liz's son, when he was 4, said to her after being asked every day for more than a year about his day in nursery school: "Why do you keep asking me about school? I'm never going to tell you." He eventually did, as a teenager, after she stopped asking him insistently.
It is true that there are times when my own children don't want to talk to me about anything -- choosing to spend their free time talking to their friends or listening to music.
But I do find out something about their day by asking extremely specific questions -- "Tell me one thing that happened in English class," for example -- and insisting that I get answers.
It works. Sometimes.
Edward Carroll takes tests for a living. To be precise, he takes the SAT, the dreaded college admissions test. Over and over.
The 38-year-old has taken every SAT made available over the past decade by its owner, the nonprofit College Board. Usually he takes it alongside high-schoolers on Saturday mornings.
He has also analyzed another decade's worth of tests.
"People think I'm crazy," he said, but his job depends on his diligence: He is a standardized test expert and tutor at the Princeton Review, an education and test-prep company.
That means he is also an expert on the ACT, the other major college entrance exam, owned by the nonprofit education and workforce-development organization ACT. Most schools use these exams to inform their admissions decisions, and just about all of them that do accept the results of the SAT or the ACT.
For those high school students now starting the grueling admissions process, Carroll offers the following from conversations with The Answer Sheet on e-mail and on the phone:
Q. What does the SAT actually test? What does it say about someone who takes it?
The SAT, more than anything else, shows how well you take the SAT. It is NOT a measure of a student's raw math or verbal ability. The College Board itself does not claim that the SAT predicts subject skills, but rather that it is a predictor of performance in college (along with the rest of a student's application).
Personally, I think it also filters out students who can't perform quickly. The test is rigidly and tightly timed. It is very, very difficult to finish each section and the [College Board] knows it. They design it that way so that they can assure a nice range of scores to the colleges for comparison.
So it doesn't tell much of anything important?
It is a very flawed test if you expect it to reveal much about student content skill or personal study and performance ability.
Who does well on it?
The SAT puts students in a pressurized environment, and students who perform well in testing situations will excel. Everyone knows a story of a slacker student who doesn't work hard in school and does well on the SAT. . . . On the SAT, if you're brilliant and slow, you'll get a very average score.
Why is it so difficult?
It's not, really. The questions are not straightforward.
Explain.
Each test is equally tricky. The simplest example of that is that it often asks "What is x + 1?" when students have to do lots of calculations to solve for x. Then, as they do throughout math class in school, they choose the value of x that they found. To put it another way, they do everything correctly in solving, then circle the wrong answer (because the trap answers will always be there)! Thus, they get the question wrong, but NOT because they didn't know what they were doing.
Is the ACT more indicative of a student's ability than the SAT?
In short, yes. It tests what students learn better than the SAT. It has its own flaws, but what it purports to do it does better than the SAT.
What are the flaws?
It is hard to finish. . . . It has to have students fall into a predictable range. It is standardized. . .
And you always have to be suspicious of the easy answer no matter what test you are taking. These tests are multiple-choice. They have to have the answer on the page, so they make the other answers as attractive as possible but specifically wrong. Students have to eliminate an obviously wrong answer and get it down to 3 or 2.
Any truth to the notion that one SAT given each year is harder than the rest?
The SAT does not change from test to test. It is a myth that there is a better day or month in which to take the test. This is a standardized test. It does not change, and the scores from one test are equivalent to scores on another test. Despite our criticisms of the SAT over the years, the College Board is very good at one thing -- making its tests the same every time. It's nonsense to think otherwise, but this myth persists.
The addition of a written essay in the SAT test in 2005 didn't change things?
The "old" one changed in March 2005. In a nutshell, it didn't change very much. They took their old SAT Writing test and tacked it onto the SAT -- that's how it got an essay. The rest of it (slight math changes and elimination of Analogies) had very little effect on the overall student experience test, despite what you may have heard. The biggest effect on students is that it is now longer -- 3 hours 45 minutes -- much more than that if you include [administrative] and break times.
Why would someone take the tricky SAT if the ACT is more straightforward?
The SAT does work for some students. . . . Some of the material on the ACT is at a higher level than the SAT. . . . I can tell SAT kids, you will never see a question with really advanced geometry.
Let's talk about test prep.
In general, our approach to the SAT is that we analyze it for unintended patterns, then tell students what they are. We don't pretend to teach more than that. This is one of the reasons that [the Princeton Review] has received criticism in the past. But we do raise scores.
Some people say test prep can only raise scores a little. Others say it can help a lot. What do you think?
It can help a lot. It depends on the point at which you start.
You've taken scores of tests. How do you do on them?
I do pretty well, but I'm human, so I can still make a mistake. . . . I can tell you this. I have gotten a perfect score in each section but not on the same test.
The kids must wonder about you when you take the SAT.
The high school kids think . . . I'm a little slow and I'm just getting to college.
Do you finish the SAT in the allotted time?
I can, but I have a much better vocabulary than your typical 16-year-old. . . . Your average adult who has gone through high school will do pretty well on the verbal section and will do less than they think they will in math, because the Pythagorean theorem doesn't come up much in their daily lives.
Why do kids always say, "Nothing," when parents ask them what happened in school?
Not all of them do. Some are chatty and tell their parents every last detail about who did what to whom at school.
But it is true most would rather not. A survey by a British government agency on this very issue was released this year. The conclusions, as reported by the BBC:
-- 82 percent of parents wished they had more information about their children's school life.
-- 16 percent of children volunteered information about their day at school.
-- Nearly 25 percent of children felt like their parents "were hassling" them by asking about school.
An informal survey conducted by The Answer Sheet -- in which several dozen children from elementary to high school were questioned -- showed that most of the kids don't want to talk about school for the same reason:
After eight hours in school and more time doing homework, they are sick of school and don't want to talk about it. You are probably asking your kids about school at dinner or even later. They are tired, and their focus is away from schoolwork. They don't want to go back there until they have to.
My friend Liz's son, when he was 4, said to her after being asked every day for more than a year about his day in nursery school: "Why do you keep asking me about school? I'm never going to tell you." He eventually did, as a teenager, after she stopped asking him insistently.
It is true that there are times when my own children don't want to talk to me about anything -- choosing to spend their free time talking to their friends or listening to music.
But I do find out something about their day by asking extremely specific questions -- "Tell me one thing that happened in English class," for example -- and insisting that I get answers.
It works. Sometimes.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Public Spending on Higher Education Pays Off, Report Says
By Aisha Labi
The full impact of the global economic crisis on higher-education systems is still unclear, but as national economies struggle to recover their footing and unemployment levels remain high, "the incentives for individuals to stay on in education are likely to rise over the next years," says a new report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The report, "Education at a Glance 2009: OECD Indicators," is the latest in an annual series that analyzes data on the education systems in the group's 30 member countries, which include many European democracies, as well as Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey, and the United States.
This year's report, based on data up to 2007, was already being prepared as the scope of the economic crisis became apparent last year. Because of this timing, "we cannot assess the impact of the crisis on education," said Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD unit that produces the Education at a Glance series. "But what we can say is that this publication allows you to look at the relationship between employment and education, and long-term earnings and education."
In periods of economic difficulty, the "opportunity costs" for opting to remain in higher education versus joining the work force are low, he said, adding that with those costs now at historic lows, demand for higher education will continue to grow.
Benefits of Public Spending
The series examines all levels of education, from early childhood up, but this year's report focuses especially on higher education, in part because of the economic climate, said Mr. Schleicher. The authors wanted to know if spending public money on higher education, particularly during a downturn, was "the right choice," he said. Based on an analysis of the pubic-sector costs of providing a university education, the answer was yes.
On average across the OECD, the net public return on the cost of providing a university education for a male student is in excess of $50,000. "In virtually every country, the public benefits of higher education outweigh the costs," Mr. Schleicher said. "The traditional wisdom was that higher education benefits individuals most, but this was the first time we looked at public costs and public benefits in conjunction."
Especially in the United States, where tuition levels are on average much higher than in other OECD countries, universities have had to cope with sharp endowment losses, curtailed government spending, and families less able to afford tuition.
Perhaps encouragingly, the report says that countries that charge relatively high tuition but also offer generous public subsidies, such as Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States, do not show lower levels of entry to higher education than other countries. Their participation rates—84 percent in Australia, 58 percent in the Netherlands, 72 percent in New Zealand, and 64 percent in the United States—are well above the OECD average.
The full impact of the global economic crisis on higher-education systems is still unclear, but as national economies struggle to recover their footing and unemployment levels remain high, "the incentives for individuals to stay on in education are likely to rise over the next years," says a new report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The report, "Education at a Glance 2009: OECD Indicators," is the latest in an annual series that analyzes data on the education systems in the group's 30 member countries, which include many European democracies, as well as Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey, and the United States.
This year's report, based on data up to 2007, was already being prepared as the scope of the economic crisis became apparent last year. Because of this timing, "we cannot assess the impact of the crisis on education," said Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD unit that produces the Education at a Glance series. "But what we can say is that this publication allows you to look at the relationship between employment and education, and long-term earnings and education."
In periods of economic difficulty, the "opportunity costs" for opting to remain in higher education versus joining the work force are low, he said, adding that with those costs now at historic lows, demand for higher education will continue to grow.
Benefits of Public Spending
The series examines all levels of education, from early childhood up, but this year's report focuses especially on higher education, in part because of the economic climate, said Mr. Schleicher. The authors wanted to know if spending public money on higher education, particularly during a downturn, was "the right choice," he said. Based on an analysis of the pubic-sector costs of providing a university education, the answer was yes.
On average across the OECD, the net public return on the cost of providing a university education for a male student is in excess of $50,000. "In virtually every country, the public benefits of higher education outweigh the costs," Mr. Schleicher said. "The traditional wisdom was that higher education benefits individuals most, but this was the first time we looked at public costs and public benefits in conjunction."
Especially in the United States, where tuition levels are on average much higher than in other OECD countries, universities have had to cope with sharp endowment losses, curtailed government spending, and families less able to afford tuition.
Perhaps encouragingly, the report says that countries that charge relatively high tuition but also offer generous public subsidies, such as Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States, do not show lower levels of entry to higher education than other countries. Their participation rates—84 percent in Australia, 58 percent in the Netherlands, 72 percent in New Zealand, and 64 percent in the United States—are well above the OECD average.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
No more funding for merit
The University of Texas at Austin is ending participation in the National Merit Scholarship Program, the largest single campus departure in years from the program, which enjoys considerable prestige in some circles but is controversial in others. The university plans to shift the funds to need-based aid.
Isnt it interesting that in a time of financial crisis, academic institutions are changeing their focus from providing funding to students who have achieved academically to give money to those based on need. Is this telling that student that academic achievement is no longer important?
While academic institutions do what they do for various reasons it is shameful for a school to pull a merit based funding. Students need to steer clear of school based funding and seek other resources to fund their education.
Isnt it interesting that in a time of financial crisis, academic institutions are changeing their focus from providing funding to students who have achieved academically to give money to those based on need. Is this telling that student that academic achievement is no longer important?
While academic institutions do what they do for various reasons it is shameful for a school to pull a merit based funding. Students need to steer clear of school based funding and seek other resources to fund their education.
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