Coaching and Much More for Chinese Students Looking to the U.S.

The New York Times recently carried an interesting article that sheds more light on the study abroad business in China these days.  The article describes the services of ThinkTank Learning, a college admission consulting company from California that recently opened an office in Shenzhen, not far from Hong Kong.  As the article notes, students, whose parents often pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, are molded by ThinkTank into well-rounded, socially conscious overachievers through a regimen often beginning as early as the year before entering high school. The company designs extracurricular activities for the students; guides them in essay writing; tutors them for the SAT, the U.S. college admission exam; and helps them with meet-and-greet sessions with alumni.   If you're following the debate about use of commercial student recruitment agencies, the article is worth reading.

News and Information in the Digital Age

I'm in Vancouver, B.C. this week for the NAFSA:  Association of International Educators annual conference.  On the flight here I happened to read a Reuters report in one of the newspapers made available by the airline.  It dealt with the rapid diffusion of smart phones in the South Korean market and it did a good job of describing this phenomenon, as far as it went.  However, it did not go far enough, in my opinion, so I wrote a post about this on my Korea Information Society blog.
I'm linking to that post here because the problem of obtaining in-depth news and analysis of developments in other cultures and nations around the world is not limited to the ICT sector, but extends to the realm of international education and study abroad.   In particular, the problem of "vagueness about Asia" that Harold Isaacs dealt with in his classic book, Scratches on Our Minds:  American Images of India and China, persists in the digital age.  Despite the flood of information released by the revolutionary development of the internet and digital media more generally, both the sheer amount of information and its uneven quality pose a distinct challenge for individuals and institutions who seek a deeper understanding of other countries, cultures and events.  Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows:  What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, spoke about this recently at the Seoul Digital Forum.
All of the above matters are on my mind on the eve of another NAFSA:  Association of International Educators conference, in no small part because of the new Center we've just launched in Seoul, the Asia Center to Advance Educational Exchange (ACAEE).  The ACAEE seeks to be responsive to both the information revolution and to the globalization of education.  I personally hope that the Center will enhance communication by providing the means to better find and evaluate information, as well as to communication more directly and in depth with human counterparts on either side of the Pacific.  Toward that end, this English blog is at least a modest start toward an important dialogue.  Your comments are most welcome.

Larson's Law on Localization--Three Years Later

Back in 2008, somewhat tongue in cheek, I propounded "Larson's Law on Localization."  The alliteration seemed appealing and I was grasping for something memorable that would drive home a central point to U.S. schools, colleges and universities who sought advice about promoting their schools in Korea. The law reads as follows.
Larson’s Law on Localization:  To effectively promote a school or other educational products and services in Korea, all key promotional information should be translated into Korean and adapted to local media patterns.
The original post may still be read on the Fulbright web site, for those of you who might be interested.   It elaborated on the law as follows.
This basic law or principle of consumer behavior and the Korean education market may seem obvious to you, but it is not universally understood or accepted.    We regularly hear the argument that “Korean students are planning to study in the U.S.  Therefore, they need to have a command of English in order to apply to and consider our school, or attend a study fair.”  This argument ignores the fact that Koreans normally think, listen, speak and write in their native language.  It also ignores the crucial reality that a student’s parents, who frequently will foot the bill for education in the U.S., are also interested in the information.  They may or may not have a strong command of English.
This is only an initial post on this issue, but I think it deserves the status of a “law,” akin to the well-known Moore’s law, stated many years ago by the founder of Intel.  After all, Korea has a culture that is thousands of years old, strong respect for education and an alphabet that ranks as its top cultural asset.  It stands to reason that Koreans will expect some important points to be delivered, through whatever medium, in their own language.  In marketing communications terms, this country probably represents the ideal case of a nation where “localization” rather than “globalization” of the promotional message is required.

In 2011, three full years after posting "Larson's Law on Localization," I think it still aptly describes the situation in Korea---one that may bear some similarity to certain other major Asian markets.

The Role of Recruitment Agents in Educational Exchange

The proper role of the private sector versus the government and public sector in education is a perennial issue in many countries, including the U.S., Korea and China, to name just three.  Nowhere is this issue more apparent than in the growing debate about the proper role, if any, of private student recruitment agents in educational exchange.
As noted in an earlier post, the U.S. State Department has taken a strong stand against the use of recruitment agents, or at least those that accept a commission from schools for the enrollment of students. Earlier this month, the board of the National Association for College Admission Counseling in the United States, which has long had a policy barring commission payments to anyone for recruiting or enrolling students, released a draft policy revision.  This revision makes it more explicit that the ban on commission payments applies, regardless of whether students are in the U.S. or from abroad.  Inside Higher Ed carried an informative article about this proposed policy revision.
East Asia finds itself at the heart of this debate over the use of commission-paid recruitment agents.  Bloomberg has just published an article entitled "China Rush to U.S. Colleges Reveals Predatory Fees for Recruits."  It is well worth reading, while keeping in mind that the practices found in China also tend to appear, to some extent or another, in Korea and perhaps other Asian countries as well.

A Widening Educational Divide in South Korea?

The Joongang Daily carried an article today entitled "The widening educational divide."  The article deals with the perennial issue in South Korea of the equality of educational opportunity, with special reference to how well it prepares students for entry into elite universities (known in Korea as "SKY" universities, an acronym referring to Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University--widely considered to be the top three tertiary institutions in the country).  As supported by some of the data in the accompanying graphic, the article argues that autonomous and special purpose high schools (mostly foreign language and science high schools) devote more resources to the preparation of students for university entry than do ordinary high schools, while the latter enroll 90 percent of the student population.
It should be noted that this article represents the views of the Joongang Daily and the Korean Federation of Teachers Associations, rather than the official views of the government.   It is worth reading because it addresses a persistent public issue in South Korea's education sector.

The Test Prep Issue in East Asia

Business Week this month published a "must read" article, entitled "China's Test Prep Juggernaut," that sheds a great deal of light on current test preparation practices in China.  It is a lengthy feature article, but well worth reading for those interested in current practices of memorization, guessing techniques and other methods that allow some Chinese students to achieve high TOEFL scores without necessarily achieving a high degree of fluency in English.
The Business Week article focuses largely on the practices of the Chinese test prep company, New Oriental Education. New Oriental built its business on the TOEFL and graduate-school entrance exams, such as the GRE and GMAT, and introduced SAT classes in 2006.   However, much of what the article describes could apply equally well to practices of some test preparation companies in South Korea.
In Korea, which built fast, nationwide broadband networks before other countries, popular web sites such as Hacker's TOEFL played a much more important role in student efforts to score high on the difficult Western academic admission's tests.   During the era of computer-based testing many Korean students, despite signing a confidentiality agreement, would post whatever TOEFL or GRE items they could remember to popular computer bulletin boards for other students to study and learn from.   In the case of the GRE, this practice is partly what led ETS to introduce a special split-format, paper based and CBT version of the GRE for China and Korea.
The fundamental problem in all of this, of course, is that universities in the United States and the world over, want accurate and reliable tests of English and scholastic aptitude.  The problem may be solved in part by improvements in testing techniques, but it may also require supplemental assessments.   For example, as the cost of doing live, video interviews via the internet continues to decrease,   that may become an option for schools to more effectively screen applicants.   More on this topic in later posts.  Comments are welcome, especially about the experience in other Asian countries.

NYT: Online Degrees "Come of Age" in Asia

According to a recent article in The New York Times, online degrees are coming of age in Asia.  As the article correctly notes, distance learning is nothing new, and some universities have been engaged in this practice for some time now.  When I was a graduate student at Stanford way back in the late 1970s, the Stanford Instructional Television Network was already thriving, allowing engineers and managers at Silicon Valley companies like Hewlett-Packard and Varian Associates to take Master's degree courses without leaving the workplace through a video connection to the Stanford campus and a talk-back system that allowed them to ask questions of the instructor during class sessions.
The New York Times article notes that the spread of online learning in Asia is due largely to the expansion of internet connectivity.    The President of the Asian Association of Open Universities, Wong Tat Meng, is quoted as saying that South Korea was the most advanced Asian country in terms of e-learning. Mr. Wong believes that demand for higher education in South Korea and China, coupled with the fact that these countries have high-speed broadband in major cities, was driving the increase in online providers.

“Many working adults simply do not have the time to attend face-to-face lectures delivered in conventional universities,” he said. “Also, governments simply cannot build sufficient brick-and-mortar universities fast enough to meet the huge demand for knowledge workers needed to drive the knowledge economy.”
That is undoubtedly the case, but the article goes on to note that the efforts of the Asia e University in Kuala Lumpur to provide degrees to students in a diverse range of Asian nations are hindered somewhat by the language ability, or lack thereof, of the students. Not surprisingly, their efforts to obtain a degree online are frequently hindered by lack of total proficiency in English.
The article also notes another major challenge for online universities---that of obtaining credibility. In fact, there are countless "degree mills" out there seeking to exploit the new communication power of the internet to sell their wares.

Yonsei Architecture Students Credit the Internet for Win in International Competition

As reported in the Joongang Daily, four Yonsei University architecture students won the grand prize in an international landscape architecture competition organized by the National University of Columbia.  The competition was to design a museum for the city of Medellin, considered the second most important city in Columbia. The students, who had never been anywhere near Colombia, used the Internet and satellite maps such as Google Earth to learn about the city’s history and culture as well as understand the landscape of the city and its geographical features.

“We were able to overcome the limitation of not being able to visit the city in person by using the Internet,” Kim said, adding that “the fact that none of us had visited the place stimulated our curiosity.”

Private Study Abroad Agencies (유학원들) in South Korea

Over the past several decades, private study abroad agencies have come to play a dominant role in South Korea's education sector.   The majority of Korean students interested in study abroad, often with their parents, employ the services of a study abroad agency to help find a suitable program, prepare for it, and apply for admission.  This pattern persists despite the fact that the activities of study abroad agencies are controversial, both here in South Korea, and in the United States, which is still the single largest destination for Korean students who study abroad.

The source of the controversy about study abroad agencies is succinctly described in a recent article in The Japan Times by Liz Reisberg and Philip G. Altbach of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston University.  In it, they note that "The primary client for agents is the institution that hires them. In order to be successful, they must deliver an acceptable number of students to their sponsoring institutions. Of concern is their activities, source of their fees, propriety of their services and transparency, particularly to students. Many universities suspect that agents sometimes complete applications and write essays for their student clients."


Because most private study abroad agencies accept commissions from schools for delivering student applicants, it is nearly impossible for many of them to provide comprehensive and impartial information about the full range of educational opportunities available in the United States, which is home to by far the largest and most diverse education sector in the world.  Partly for this reason, the U.S. State Department-affiliated network of more than 400 EducationUSA advising centers around the world  all subscribe to a code of ethics in student advising that prohibits them from certain types of work with study abroad agencies.

It should be noted that study abroad agencies in Korea have served a very useful purpose by translating the largely English language materials of U.S. colleges and universities into Korean and interpreting the sometimes complex cluster of admissions tests, essays and other requirements for the prospective students and their parents.  This is a need that will continue, even with continued development of the internet and mobile, digital media networks.   However, as Reisberg and Altbach note, there are alternatives to the private recruitment agents.

The digital information revolution makes possible direct, audio-visual and interactive communication between U.S. schools and prospective students not only in Korea, but throughout Asia.  The emergence of virtual events such as CollegeWeekLive in the United States have broad implications for how U.S. study abroad programs recruit students in Asia.   I will be commenting on some of these in future posts. Comments on the above issues are welcome.

World Leaders See Increasing Role of Technology in Education

I just ran across the results of the survey sponsored by Cisco, released in March, which show that three quarters of top education officials around the world believe that technology can play a major role in how students learn and how teachers education.  Perhaps you may think this is an unsurprising result, especially given that the survey of 500 administrators in fourteen countries was sponsored by Cisco.   However, I suspect that a survey sponsored by Google, Apple, Samsung or LG would have produced similar results.  The revolutionary developments in broadband, both fixed and mobile, that these companies and others are leading, have already transformed libraries, lectures and learning the world over.  Think Google Books, MIT Open Courseware, or the Mobile Learning Program introduced at Abilene Christian University a few years back with the introduction of the iPhone.  These are but a few examples.

Rural Boarding School Educational Model Introduced in Korea

The Hankyoreh has an interesting story on the recent establishment of a rural boarding school in North Chungcheong Province.  Students accepted into the school live there in dormitories from the time the bus arrives on Monday morning until the Friday afternoon bus leaves to take them to their homes.  The school is a collaborative effort of the North Chungcheong Province Office of Education, residents of farming communities, and students parents.   It represents an effort to introduce educational diversity and opportunities to children in rural areas.   What caught my eye in the story was the example of one student living in rural North Chungcheong Province who had moved there from Daejon in the third grade.  He was unaccustomed to rural life and consequently spent seven to eight hours a day on the internet playing games!  The article provides an interesting glimpse of the educational challenges faced in rural Korea today and how they are being met.