International News

Student loan companies under scrutiny

America’s $17 billion (Rs.75,600 crore) per year student-loan industry has come under scrutiny from the Democrats as they prepare to assume power in Congress. The industry, a longtime ally of the newly rejected Republican majority, has been accused of everything from bribing university officials to profiteering from government subsidies.

The Democrats have called for the investigation of one loan company and for new laws that would impact on others. University financial aid officers may well be next on the hit list. "Everything is starting to bubble to the surface," says Karin Pellmann, spokeswoman for MyRichUncle, a new loan company founded by two recent graduates of New York University who have made it their mission to shine a light on the practices.

Edward Kennedy, the Democratic senator who will chair the senate education committee has proposed a law requiring universities to disclose what deals, if any, they have made with loan companies in exchange for steering students to them for private loans. Students are not required to select from the lists of ‘preferred lenders’ supplied by universities, but most of them do.

It is not illegal for companies that offer private loans for students to pay kickbacks to universities. But it is illegal for companies to do so if they offer low-cost, government-subsidised loans. Senator Kennedy has called for an investigation into whether any of these companies are providing such inducements. "We already know that the federal student-loan programme is filled with unnecessary subsidies for the big lenders," he says. "That’s why I’m even more troubled when I hear of the aggressive marketing practices of some lenders who make private loans to students. We need to examine these practices and put a stop to any action that prevents students from getting the best deal."

At least three universities have admitted accepting cash in exchange for referring students to particular lenders, though one has suspended the process because of the growing attention it attracts. And several loan companies have acknowledged providing universities with a complicated range of financial inducements. They insist that the arrangements are entirely legal.

Democrats have also targeted another private lender, the National Education Loan Network, which was found in a federal audit to have overcharged the government $278 million for student loan subsidies.

Student suicides hysteria

Forty schools in Japan have been put on suicide watch and others on high alert, after the deaths of headteachers and pupils caused by exam pressure and bullying. Four heads and scores of pupils have taken their lives because of bullying and an exam scandal, in which schools were found to be ditching compulsory lessons to cram for exams.

The education ministry recently confirmed that it had received a letter from an anonymous teenager intent on suicide "if the bullying did not stop". It was followed by dozens of similar letters and e-mails to Bunmei Ibuki, Japan’s education minister. The ministry pleaded with the correspondents to reconsider their intentions and warned parents and teachers to be wary.

Unfortunately the letter seemed to fuel a mass hysteria which resulted in the number of child suicides rocketing. Headteachers at two schools where pupils had killed themselves because of bullying followed suit because they had failed to stem the problem. In October, two heads killed themselves when their schools were exposed for skipping some compulsory subjects to focus on cramming for the all-important university entrance exams.

On an average day, 80 Japanese people take their own lives. Last year a total of 608 children killed themselves. But bullying, according to the education ministry, provoked only a fraction of their deaths. However, a recent survey reported that 21 percent of suicide students had been abused or threatened. Now journalists and commentators are calling on the politicians to do something.

The reason for the phenomenon appears complex. Many are blaming the hysteria whipped up by the letters for copycat suicides. Meanwhile some Japanese parents are hiring private detectives to see if their children are the victims of playground bullying, paying them up to £1,000 (Rs.85,000) per week.

Tertiary education intake row

The Australian government has come under attack for asserting that too many school students are being urged to enter higher education. A report released in mid November says it is a myth that Australia does not need more university-trained people. It says there is a shortage of skilled professionals, which the government is seeking to fill via an expansion of Australia’s immigration programme. But it notes that without a big increase in domestic higher education training, the shortages will become endemic.

Despite a critical shortage of university-trained workers in the health, engineering and business sectors, prime minister John Howard has said on several occasions that more young people should take up apprenticeships rather than try to enter university. "Too often, Australians have been persuaded that our prosperity is reliant on… shoehorning more and more young people into university courses," Howard told a skills conference recently.

Instead of giving universities the money they need to enroll more Australians, the government has slashed spending in higher education, says the report, which was written by two Monash University academics: Bob Birerell, professor of sociology and Virginia Rapson, a researcher. The report, for the Dusseldorf Skills Forum, rejects claims made by Howard and a succession of education ministers that since taking office in 1996, the government has sharply boosted the number of Australians attending university.

It says that until this year the government had maintained "an effective cap on the number of places for domestic students", reduced their access to financial assistance while increasing higher education contribution schemes charges, and allowed universities to impose full fees.

As a result, the number of new students at university in the past decade has risen only slightly and even fell in 2005 and 2006, while the expansion in overall numbers is due almost solely to a sharp rise in foreign student enrollments, from 55,000 in 1996 to 235,000 currently. "A further question for the Australian government is why, if it believes there is too much emphasis on university training, has it expanded the skilled immigration intake?" the report asks.

School advice system recommendation

France’s young people need better and earlier guidance to help them choose the university course that suits them best, a report presented to prime minister Dominique de Villepin concludes.

The report also calls on universities to "professionalise" their programmes to make them more relevant to corporate requirements — and it recommends that universities lose funding if their graduates remain jobless. The paper was commissioned to explore how to strengthen links between universities and industry, combat student failure and equip young people to find work. It originated from a six-month debate launched by President Jacques Chirac in March, in the wake of nationwide student and unions protest against a youth employment reform that the government subsequently abandoned.

In April, de Villepin appointed a 16-member Universite-Emploi commission headed by Patrick Hetzel, chief education officer of Limoges. The group spent the following months organising more than 120 meetings in 29 education districts and involving nearly 20,000 academics, employers, teachers, trade unions, students, regional authorities and other interested parties. France’s high annual dropout rate exceeds 80,000 students — 20 percent of first and second-years — while 11 percent of graduates are unemployed three years after completing their studies.

The report rejects pre-university selection but recommends establishing an effective advice system during the final year of school, so that pupils do not undertake university-level courses for which they have no aptitude. The report recommends that the licence (bachelors equivalent) should be revised to "make it a real diploma leading to job opportunities". Every licence course should include a module requiring students to construct "personal professional projects" as well as to perfect skills such as foreign languages, use of information and communication technology, and producing a CV. The report also suggests that universities receive funding according to their graduates’ success in finding work.

University presidents welcomed the measures, but regretted that the report – and the prime minister — remained "quiet on its implementation and the resources that will be devoted to it". Unef, the majority student union, also criticised the lack of information about funding and complained that student failure was seen only from the point of view of suitability of courses.

Sectarian violence hits academia

All Baghdad universities were shut in mid November on the orders of Adb Dhiab, the Iraqi higher education minister. His intervention came hours after men in military-style uniforms kidnapped up to 150 men at gunpoint from the ministry of higher education and scientific research-scholarships and cultural relations directorate building. Suspicion fell on the Shia Muslim-dominated security forces, and a number of senior officers are reported to be under investigation.

Human rights organisations had already called for urgent government action to protect academics after the apparent tit-for-tat shooting of a Baghdad University professor. Jassim al-Asadi, dean of the university’s school of administration and economics, was assassinated, along with his wife and son, while driving in the north of the city on November 2.

Prof. Al-Asadi was from the Shia community, and his murder came three days after unknown assailants shot and killed Issam al-Rawi, a professor of geography at the university’s earth sciences department. Prof. Al-Rawi, head of the Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, was a Sunni.

At least 181 academics have been killed since the 2003 invasion and a further 85 have been kidnapped or have escaped murder attempts. There are about 19,000 university academics in the country. According to Prof. Al-Rawi, assassins are targeting well-known scholars in an attempt to slow reconstruction by driving them into exile.

The New York-based organisation Scholars at Risk has reiterated calls for international agencies to improve security for the Iraqi higher education sector. The Brussels Tribunal lists more than 300 academic victims of violence. Of these, more than three quarters were killed.

Medicos discover Poland

Places to study medicine are so scarce in Sweden that hundreds of students are paying 500,000 Swedish kronor (Rs.32.2 lakh) to train to qualify as doctors in Poland. Both the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare and the National Agency for Higher Education have warned the government about an acute shortage of medical schools. Last year the agency recommended that an additional 320 seats were necessary to meet the demand for qualified medical staff. The government’s response was to allocate an extra 64 places for the next academic year, increasing the number from 1,080 to 1,144.

A recent study by the Swedish National Board of Student Aid, which handles student loans, reveals that last year 1,429 Swedes elected to study medicine abroad compared with 247 ten years ago. The figure is set to increase next autumn, the board predicts.

In the past, most students who opted to study medicine abroad went to Denmark where, as in Sweden, there are no tuition fees. But the Danes have put a stop to the influx, prioritising home students and forcing Swedish students to look elsewhere. Since Poland joined the European Union in 2004, the number of Swedes studying medicine there quadrupled. Last year, 265 Swedes studied medicine in Poland, while 634 studied in Denmark.

The cost of a Polish degree is not cheap, with all first-years paying Euro 12,000 (Rs.6.96 lakh). The next five years of the degree cost Euro 8,000 each, bringing the total cost to 500,000 Swedish kronor. The maximum figure that a Swedish student can receive in loans and grants each year is 133,840 kronor. This only covers the annual cost of tuition, leaving students to pay for accommodation and other living expenses.

Jessica McMillion, whose father teaches at Stockholm University is in her third year at a university in Warsaw. She chose to study in Poland because she wanted the opportunity to live there — it is her mother’s country of origin. Comments her father, Alan McMillion: "There are mostly Swedes and Norwegians in her classes, but everything is taught in English."

Under Swedish law, doctors educated in the EU are entitled to practise if they demonstrate the language skills needed to work in a Swedish-speaking environment.

Wacky degrees epidemic

Italian universities have caught the wacky degree bug with a bewildering range of unregulated Masters degree programmes that has grown fourfold since 2001 and by 24 percent in just the past year. Officials fear they are stoking unrealistic carreer ambitions among students and their parents.

The University of L’Aquila, for instance runs a course in international rugby management. On offer elsewhere are Masters in language and values in television films; perfumes, scents and natural aromas; food designs; and management of large wild mammals in the Alps. The programmes, aimed at students with first or second degrees, cost €1,000-3,000 (Rs.0.58-1.74 lakh).

Critics complain that the programmes create the illusion of a pathway to a profession — a claim refuted by reliable graduate employment statistics. Masters in fields such as media, communications and cultural management are cited as not being relevant to job-market demands.

Comments Luciano Modica, under secretary at the university ministry, former president of the Rectors’ Conference and a former rector of Siena University: "We are worried this gives students and parents unrealistic expectations of career opportunities," adding that "there is nothing we can do. A Masters has no legal value. Universities are free to run courses without ministry guidance. If there are Masters that students pay for, but are pointless in terms of serious training or job opportunities, it is an ethical rather than legal issue."

Growing concern about recruitment agents

Some overseas agents helping universities to lure international students to the UK are giving recruits false hopes of what British higher education can offer, The Times Higher Education Supplement has learnt.

There is mounting concern over the damage that unscrupulous agents are doing to Britain’s reputation in the multi-billion pound market for overseas students, and concern about the knock-on effects for lecturers facing the brunt of complaints from disillusioned students. I-Graduate, an education consultancy, is launching a review of the rapidly growing number of unregulated agents who are prepared to sell places by making false assurances to students over their employment prospects and the facilities and level of support they will find in the UK.

Free top-of-the-range equipment for personal use, daily one-to-one tuition, guaranteed work placements with blue-chip companies, easy-to-find, lucrative part-time work and hotel-style accommodation are among the promises made to persuade students to part with tens of thousands of pounds in fees and living costs. It is estimated that there are at least 5,000 agents worldwide whose activities account for 10 to 60 percent of institutions’ annual intake of overseas students. Some have a role in admissions decisions, previously the exclusive responsibility of academics.

Their number and the size of their commissions (up to 15 percent of their recruits’ tuition fees) are rising as institutions strive to fight off fierce competition and to hit their own ambitious targets for increasing income from the burgeoning overseas market. I-Graduate will begin a study next year into how agents operate, what kind of relationship they have with the institutions they represent and how much they know about the institutions and their marketing strategies.

Says William Archer, I-Graduate director: "We have seen a dramatic rise in the use of agents, yet this remains a relatively unregulated and misunderstood area. Institutions have set themselves high recruitment targets that they are now having to deliver. They require agents to help them achieve these goals, and this can result in complicated financial arrangements that might give cause for concern."

Joe Docherty, director of the international office at Portsmouth University says that agents working in his institution’s main markets receive training and are required to work from a script. But he admits that many students come via agents in smaller markets that don’t get such training.

Comments Karen Blackney, deputy director of the Centre for International Education at Middlesex University: "It is crucial to get it right because if a student is unhappy, they can easily damage an institution’s reputation by posting their feelings on the web."

(Compiled from Times Educational Supplement and Times Higher Education Supplement)