For this instalment in our occasional “Five for Friday” column, we have gathered below some of the more eye-catching and varied items that we’ve been reading lately. We present them here for your end-of-week reading pleasure.
When admissions becomes marketing
This post from College Admissions Today has been nagging at us for a little while now. It makes the interesting point that admissions staff are now often asked to play a more direct role with respect to marketing and recruitment, and raises some interesting questions about how this impacts workloads and focus in the admissions office.
Is Japan going to hit its target?
Japan aims to attract 300,000 foreign students by 2020. The good news: there is just one thing standing in its way. The bad news: that one thing is China. The Japan Times reports on how China’s efforts to attract greater numbers of international students are drawing market share from Japan.
Saudi Arabia tops the first ranking of Arab universities
Saudi Arabia owns the top three positions in an initial ranking of 91 Arab universities in 16 countries published recently by US News & World Report. The rankings are notably concentrated: the top seven countries counted 77 universities in the table (85% of the total), while seven other countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen – had only one ranked university each.
Pearson launches new English test
Education giant Pearson and the online language learning platform busuu have partnered for the global launch of a new English proficiency exam: the Global Scale of English Test (GSET). busuu is the first company worldwide to offer the test, on exclusive terms with Pearson for an initial six-month period.
We’ve looked at Facebook from all sides now
Social marketing specialist Brian Carter offers an unvarnished view of Facebook: the good, the bad, and the ugly. In this nicely balanced post, he offers a compact summary of the challenges – and strengths – of this key social media platform.
Interesting reg. launch of the English Proficiency test. EF Education First launched their own free Test EFSET (https://www.efset.org/) in September 2014. There seems to be a race to set standards for measuring and reporting on English proficiency levels with Pearson’s GSE initiative (www.english.com/gse) and EF’s English Proficiency Index (http://www.ef.edu/epi).
Thanks for sharing your observations Chris!
ICEF Monitor has an upcoming video interview with EF’s Anders Ahlund, President of International Sales & Marketing. It should be published in the new few weeks. We will drop you a note and update this comment thread when it’s online.
Thanks again!