International News

High price of English education

Among the most commercial of cities, Hong Kong follows many markets; but none more intently than the trade in debentures tied to admission into the city’s international primary and secondary schools. These non-interest-bearing bonds are typically issued to pay for construction or other costs. Bought by parents anxious to do the best by their children, or by employers anxious to attract the best staff, they are then traded at prices set by the city’s volatile economic fluctuations.

Recently, slots in international schools have become precious. The economy is booming in China’s tailwind, attracting well-paid expatriates. Prosperous local residents, meanwhile, are deserting local schools because of what is seen as deterioration in English-language teaching since the reversion to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. It is not just the very rich who are worried: early this month a small group of not very well-off South Asian residents marched through central Hong Kong, demanding more schooling in English, arguing their children were suffering from having to attend classes conducted in Chinese.

Demand is high, supply is limited, and the results, at the top end of the market, are predictable: soaring prices. In 2004, the price of a debenture at the Chinese International School, possibly the most sought after institution, sold for HK$ 600,000 (Rs.35 lakh). Recently, the South China Morning Post splashed on its front page a report that a family had paid HK $1 million (Rs.51.6 lakh) for a debenture, and then entered its child in the school’s first grade. Similar, if less dramatic, price increases were reported at other international schools.

The schools all treat the debentures differently. The Chinese International School stresses that theirs does not guarantee a school place. Applicants sit a merit-based test, and some debenture-holders are rejected and some non-holders accepted. Still, holders must feel their children gain some advantage. Hong Kong International School, popular among Americans, gives debenture-holders more rights. If an applicant meets the school’s standards, a debenture places him at the head of the queue. Most schools lie somewhere in between these two approaches.

Schools are understandably sensitive about acknowledging the embarrassing tie between money and admittance. Raising money for education is a challenge everywhere and Hong Kong’s system compares favourably with say, British private schools, where prices are stratospheric, or American ones, where parents’ ‘contributions’ often can carry the same benefits as debentures, but have no market-signalling value. Hong Kong’s school-debenture prices are sending two messages: there is a market for good education; and some people have the money and are willing to pay for it.

Voucher proponents gain ground

In the gruelling battle over how to improve America’s schools, no reform faces greater resistance than school vouchers — the idea that parents should have a portable chunk of money to spend on their child’s education at any school they want.

Teachers’ unions and their allies are adept at quashing voucher bills whenever they come before state legislatures. They argue that public schools will be undermined if parents can use taxpayers’ money to send their children elsewhere. If by miracle a voucher bill does get passed into law, it is almost always challenged. For instance, Utah has just become the first state to approve a universal voucher programme, but opponents have organised a statewide referendum to scrap it.

Now some supporters of school vouchers, frustrated with state legislators, are testing a new tactic: going to court. Last July a group of parents in New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the state and 25 poorly performing districts. In Crawford’s vs. Davy they are arguing that since public schools deny students their constitutional right to a proper education, the court should refund their money so they can spend it at any school they choose.

Courts across America have seen plaintiffs ask for more school aid. But no judges have responded as zealously as those in New Jersey. Since 1985 the state’s Supreme Court has been deep in policymaking, demanding money for everything from school construction to summer courses. As a result, spending has rocketed in the 31 so-called ‘Abbott’ districts. The teachers’ union says that the cash is helping schools to improve; some parents say they are not improving fast enough. In Newark, which spends the most, 61 percent of the 11th-graders failed to achieve even basic proficiency in maths in 2005.

Ironically, it is this intervention that has attracted free-market pro-voucher reformers. To Clint Bolick, of the Phoenix-based Alliance for School Choice, New Jersey looked like fertile ground for a further lawsuit. The alliance teamed up with three local organisations — Excellent Education for Everyone (E3), the Black Ministers’ Council and the Latino Leadership Alliance — to support Crawford.

The suit filed by the parents of 12 children in failing schools, argues that the state is indeed denying children a proper education, but that the Abbott solution is wrong. Rather than pump more money into a failing system and hope it improves, the suit reasons, the court should let taxpayers take their money elsewhere, be it to private schools or public schools in another town.

Back to school movement

It’s three days after graduation. the students have gone from the leafy campus of St. Lawrence University in rural upstate New York. It’s so quiet you can hear the birds. Except in Eben Holden Hall. There, a classroom is crowded and noisy, and almost all the desks are filled by academics.

This is Faculty College, a three-day voluntary refresher programme to improve teaching. It’s a far-flung example of a movement in American universities to refocus attention on undergraduate teaching. "I don’t know if it’s a re-engagement with teaching; in my mind, it’s a continuation. But I think we’ve started to treat teaching the way we treat scholarship, which is that it’s an ongoing learning curve," says Kim Mooney, associate professor of psychology and director of St. Lawrence’s Centre for Teaching and Learning.

The new emphasis on teaching at US universities wasn’t entirely spontaneous. One of the catalysts has been increasing pressure from politicians and the public for more accountability from universities, whose cost to students and tax payers continues to soar. Another has been the advent of new classroom technologies that faculty need to master. The influential Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching pushed the idea of faculty instruction by making grants available to pay for it.

And there has been the spur provided by a series of books by respected authors critical of university teaching, including one by Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard University, called Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should be Learning More. "Books like that, which have been written by people who are friends of higher education — those things have some influence," says Steven Weisler, dean of academic development at Hampshire College, which has just received a $250,000 (Rs.1 crore) grant to establish a centre for teaching. "Then there’s the external pressure coming out of Washington that raises some of the same issues that the internalists have raised."

Still, university officials concede that the system of advancement in US higher education generally favours research and publication over teaching. And while teaching performance influences decisions about tenure and promotion in some cases, good classroom evaluations seldom bring about the same financial rewards as developing a lucrative new drug or publishing a book.

Manna for campus America

Several American universities have received large donations from charities and former students. The largest among recent endowments is a $105 million (Rs.441 crore) donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to set up a health research institute at the University of Washington. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation will collect and analyse data on health trends and evaluate the effectiveness of programmes. The results will be available to policy makers, researchers and the public. The donation is the largest gift in the university’s history.

Meanwhile, another software magnate has donated $100 million (Rs.400 crore) to the University of Illinois. Alumnus Thomas Siebel, founder of Siebel Systems will make the gift in his will for science and engineering programmes at the university.

The University of Chicago has also received a similar-sized donation from an anonymous alumnus to be spent on scholarships for low-income students. Finally actor Paul Newman made a $10 million (Rs.40 crore) donation to his alma mater, Kenyon College in Ohio. The money will go into the college’s scholarship fund.

Release Esfandiari clarion call

The world’s largest association of educators of overseas students has called for the release of an Iranian-American academic imprisoned in Iran.

The Association of International Educators issued a resolution at its annual conference calling for the release of Haleh Esfandiari. She directs the Middle East programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars and has been imprisoned in Tehran since May 8. The Iranian government has formally charged her with espionage and "endangering national security through propaganda against the system," says the Washington-based centre.

Ambitious new university

The king of Saudi Arabia has promoted a new graduate university in the kingdom. The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is reported to have been conferred one of the largest university endowments in history, although the size of the king’s donation will not be revealed until autumn. The campus at Rabigh will open in 2009. An international search has begun for the university’s first president who will be appointed by the end of the year or early 2008. Other top administrative posts will be filled after the president is in place.

The university will include four research institutes on resources, energy and the environment; biosciences and engineering; materials science and engineering; and applied mathematics and computer science.

Grants of up to $1 billion (Rs.4,000 crore) over ten years will pay for research collaborations with universities worldwide into desalination and water supply, carbon capture and hydrogen-rich fuels, industrial biotechnology, catalysis and polymer chemistry, language software technologies and computational linguistics, and scientific computing.

There will also be scholarships for students. The Discovery Scholars scheme pays for tuition and accommodation for up to 250 undergraduates at other universities and colleges who would start postgraduate courses at KAUST when they finish their studies. The King Abdullah Scholars Programme will support outstanding students who will represent KAUST in their home institutions, attend seminars and research events on the campus.

Lingering legacy of racism

When South African university leaders met President Thabo Mbeki recently to discuss the future of higher education, the predominant skin colour in the room was brown. Yet even though most of the country’s university leaders are black, as are most of its students, race remains a hot issue across South Africa’s campuses. Some 13 years after the final collapse of apartheid, and despite some startling progress in terms of black access to higher education, many people in the university sector feel strongly that a race legacy lingers.

The race question will be central to a book on transformation planned by Jonathan Jansen, an outspoken black scholar and dean of education at the University of Pretoria, which is predominantly Afrikaans (white). He aims to write it during a Fulbright scholarship to Stanford University later this year. Last year, his article ‘Black Dean’ was published in the Harvard Educational Journal.

Prof. Jansen believes "race is very much alive" on the country’s campuses but he says South Africans do not like to talk about it "except by shouting about it". This is a startling claim, because South African universities have tackled issues of race on campuses through affirmative action in appointments, by opening access to black students, and via academic and funding support to disadvantaged students.

Mala Singh, interim chief executive officer of the South African Council on Higher Education (CHE), which advises the government and conducts quality assurance audits of universities says all the institutions evaluated so far have tried to introduce strategies to improve student access and attract black academics. "Transformation is not only about numbers — it is also about tackling issues of institutional culture, creating a more supportive environment for female academics and putting in place policies that improve access for students and ensure their success."

In terms of the student body, universities have achieved extraordinary transformation. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme supports more than 100,000 black students a year with low or no-interest loans. Stroll through any urban campus and its multiracial character is striking. In the mid 1980s a quarter of students were African; in 1994, they comprised half; now they make up 61 percent of South Africa’s 735,000 students. White student proportions have shrunk from 60 percent to 25 percent over the same period.

But according to academics such as Prof. Jansen, that is where South Africa’s higher education miracle ends. Six in ten white youngsters enroll in higher education but the figure for Africans is only one in eight, or 12 percent. Race also skews the chances of graduating. Many African students struggle to overcome the handicap of poor schooling, and many drop out because of financial difficulties.

G-8 call for varsity reform

The heads of Australia’s top eight universities have called for a new commission to overhaul the country’s higher education regulations system. The Group of Eight, made up of the University of Adelaide, the Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, Monash University, the University of New South Wales, the University of Queensland, the University of Sydney and the University of Western Australia, says a new Australian tertiary education commission would rationalise the sector’s regulation. It would also oversee the Australian student financing service which provides loans, income support and scholarships for students.

Universities should be allowed to charge up to 125 percent of course costs in tuition fees, with costs approved by the Productivity Commission. Student loans would cover the cost of fees above government subsidy, and there would also be a system of national student scholarships.

Nokia-Tingshua research centre

The Finland-based mobile phone company Nokia has set up a joint research centre with a Chinese university. Tsinghua University and Nokia will research the internet, wireless and interactive communications for Asia, and mechanics and hardware for multimedia devices and mobile internet services.

About 20 Nokia researchers will work alongside 30 professors and associates and upto 50 students from the university. The deal which is the first of its kind for Nokia in Asia follows similar arrangements between the company and universities in the US, the UK and Finland.

Brown’s industry involvement plan

Prime minister Gordon Brown will drive his plan to bring business and schools together by taking an even more hands-on role in education policy than his predecessors, The Times Educational Supplement has learnt.

The new prime minister is expected to chair the National Council for Educational Excellence, which will set out the strategic direction for education policy. And Brown is determined that commerce should play a much bigger role. He has collected a high-powered cadre of business leaders to serve as the first five members of the national council. They include Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco’s chief executive, and Damon Buffini, head of the private equity firm Permira.

Brown wants schools to have individual business partners to help with activities such as mentoring. The plan is an extension of the original philosophy behind trust schools although there is no suggestion the partners would have any say in running schools.

Comments John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders: "I don’t think business has ever made a significant contribution to education and it is time it started. If this provides a vehicle for that to happen, it will be a lot better than the carping from the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) and the Institute of Directors we have become used to."

Heads, teachers, parents and representatives from the higher education and voluntary sector will also be appointed to the council which is likely to have a role in policy making.

Government sources suggest that the department of education and skills is to be split in a radical re-organisation. A new children’s department is being proposed to look after education up to the age of 16 and possibly between 16 and 18, taking in elements of health and social services. Under these proposals skills and vocational education for 16 to 18-year-olds would come under a separate department.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Educational Supplement, Times Higher Education Supplement and The Economist)