James Gregory Friedman stands at the front of an Oregon State University classroom and writes two words on a white board: disposable income.
“What does that mean?” he asks, looking expectantly at his students, who are mostly male, Asian, and, for the moment, silent.
Mr. Friedman is an English-language instructor, but these days he is spending much of his time discussing business theory and basic engineering principles, as part of a new program here for international students. Known as a pathway program, it combines intensive language instruction and extensive support services with a typical first-year curriculum.
These new preparatory programs attracted controversy when they began to spring up at North American universities several years ago, largely because of the involvement of for-profit companies in developing and running many of the courses.
But now the programs, which number at least 15 in the United States and Canada, are getting a second look because of their academic outcomes: Although results are preliminary, initial pathways graduates—who typically move into the second year of university study after completing a year of coursework—have performed on par with, or better than, domestic and foreign students who earned direct admission.
Mr. Friedman, who goes by Greg, is leading a supplemental tutorial, one of several paired each semester with introductory seminars in subjects like chemistry and engineering to give pathways students, who meet the university’s academic standards but struggle with English proficiency, extra academic and linguistic help.
“I would dispose of my pen in the trash,” he says to the class, miming the action, “but what does it mean in an economic sense? What would you buy with your disposable income?”
“Clothes,” says one. “Video games,” volunteers another.
“Bags,” offers a third, pointing to her designer purse.
Not every student fully grasps the economic theory. “Chopsticks?” suggests a young woman sitting near the front of the room, perhaps thinking less about “income” and more about “disposable.”
Thus far, however, officials at Oregon State, which runs its program with a British company, Into University Partnerships, are more than pleased with the outcomes of its pathways students. The first group to matriculate into the university last fall earned higher grades that semester, with an average of 2.78, than American or other international sophomores did. “They’ve exceeded our expectations,” says Sabah U. Randhawa, Oregon State’s provost and executive vice president.
Critics, though, question whether universities can maintain standards, especially as the transitional programs, imports from Australia and Britain, grow in size. They also continue to be troubled by the involvement of for-profit companies in what they say are core educational functions. “Many of us in academia worry that pathways programs are dumbing down university curricula,” says Scott G. Stevens, director of the University of Delaware’s English-language program.
Those in favor of pathways programs concede that they are difficult to get right: They work only for students with moderate English deficiencies, not severe deficits. They are complex to set up and run. And they require collaboration, between academic departments and English-language specialists and, often, between universities and the private sector.
Done well, however, the programs can attract a whole new crop of fee-paying international students without diluting academic quality, advocates say. “Sometimes people mutter about it being a back door” into the university, says Roger N. Brindley, associate vice president for global academic programs at the University of South Florida, which offers a program with Into. “It’s a second path to the front door.”
Knocking Down Barriers
The pathways model originated in Australia more than a decade and a half ago. Today nearly every Australian university offers a transition-year program. The approach has taken root elsewhere, including Britain, where the programs are widespread.
In 2006 the first North American institution, Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, inked a pathways deal, with an Australian company, Navitas. Last year university officials, pleased with the growth in foreign enrollments, renewed the contract for 10 more years, ahead of schedule.
The business models for the programs are complex and varied. In some, universities outsource the entire pathway to a private provider, taking a cut of the tuition and fees paid by students in that first year. The real financial benefits to the university come when students matriculate. By contrast, at both Oregon State and South Florida, the institutions are partners with Into, sharing upfront education and recruitment costs for pathways students as well as revenues from the tuition they pay.
At least two institutions, Drexel and George Mason Universities, declined to sign with private providers but liked the concept enough to start homegrown programs.
The structured nature of pathways makes them particularly popular with younger students (although many universities do offer graduate-level programs). Other core audiences for pathways programs include students who want to save time and money, such as those on government-sponsored scholarships, which often don’t pay for an extra year of English classes. The programs are also a draw in booming markets where students frequently struggle with language proficiency, such as China.
While teaching the language is the goal of a typical English program, turning non-native speakers into college students is the objective of these academic preparatory courses.
To do that, the first year of college is restructured. “The idea is to give international students extra support in the first year, when it can be the hardest,” says Michael Witbeck, coordinator for science and engineering pathways at Oregon State.
Students in the university’s pathway program can pick from one of four avenues of study, depending on their intended major: business, engineering, science or natural resources, and general education, which readies students to pursue degrees in the humanities and social sciences. The curriculum stretches across two semesters and a summer term so that students, who pay tuition and fees somewhat higher than those paid by other first-year out-of-state students, can juggle courses in their chosen disciplines with lots of language support.
Students’ first terms in Corvallis are loaded with English classes, no matter their pathway. Most take academic reading and writing and academic listening and speaking, along with a required personal-health course, an hour a week of physical fitness, and an elective related to their major. Business students, for example, have the option to enroll in one of a handful of approved mathematics courses.
At James Madison University, a public institution that works with Study Group, another provider, pathways students are fed a diet of college writing, public speaking, critical thinking, and math, a schedule that hews closely to core college requirements, says Linda Cabe Halpern, dean of university studies.
George Mason’s year-old Access program is also anchored in the university’s general-education foundation. “It’s broad enough that it will fit with whatever degree a student wants to pursue,” says Nicole J. Sealey, its director.
Building Bridges
Setting a curriculum that is at once academically rigorous and able to be mastered by students with limited English skills is a tricky balancing act, made more complicated when people have to cross departmental lines or collaborate with private-sector companies to create course content. At some institutions, such as Northeastern University, which signed on with Kaplan, the university has total control over instruction, while at others, such as James Madison, teachers hired by the partner company run university-vetted pathways courses, for which students earn transfer credit.
At Oregon State, faculty members from departments including business and engineering, which are likely to see significant numbers of pathways students transfer in, were involved early on in course selection. The course choices haven’t always worked out—students in a graduate-level business pathway, for example, struggled in a business-law course because of their unfamiliarity with American legal concepts (like jaywalking), says James R. Coakley, associate dean of graduate business programs.
The Into model is a hybrid one: In some cases, students are taught by faculty members in academic departments; in others, lecturers work within the English-language center. Some classes are of pathways students only, while in others the international students are mixed with regular undergraduates.
The strategy is complicated, says Bob Gilmour, academic director of the Into-OSU center, but he argues that the ties it builds between faculty members and English-language instructors lead to better programs. He speaks from experience: As an English instructor at Newcastle University, in Britain, he had “deeply opposed” a partnership between Into and the university. He changed his mind, he says, when he saw that the approach finally brought “academic teachers into the English center and the other way around.”
Another way greater cooperation occurs is in “bridge” sessions, supplemental tutorials taken in tandem with a regular academic course. All the students in Mr. Friedman’s English class at Oregon State, for example, are also enrolled in an introductory business course, and his weekly reviews are meant to reinforce both vocabulary and ideas covered in reading and class discussions. Advocates of bridge courses, which are not unique to pathways programs, say they work because they simultaneously build up language and subject-matter learning.
Mr. Friedman frequently sits in class sessions and talks with his counterpart, a professor from the business school. He also has access to student grades, so he can see who is struggling. “We’re teaching language, we’re teaching content, we’re helping them pass the course,” he says.
During his recent class, Mr. Friedman makes sure his students fully grasp the concept of disposable income, then segues into a discussion about advertising, as he prompts—and occasionally prods—his students to speak up. He fields a few questions about the lecture and reminds students about their homework assignment. “You should read your chapter carefully,” he advises them. “A lot of the answers are right in the book.”
Staying the Course
Many of the strategies employed in pathways programs are broadly embraced in higher education.
Class sizes are typically small. Irene Rolston teaches an anthropology course that many students in Oregon State’s general-education pathway take. When she offered the course as part of the regular curriculum, she often had 65 students or more in class. Now she has about 20.
In addition to bridge courses, programs have robust educational-support services. Access students at George Mason are paired with honors students who serve as mentors. Peer tutors and writing advisers who specialize in non-native English speakers are also available.
Oregon State employs an “academic success coordinator” charged with monitoring student progress and intervening at the first sign of trouble. “This isn’t rocket science,” says JoAnn S. McCarthy, director of academic affairs in the United States for Into University Partnerships. “It’s just good teaching.”
Much of the top floor of the cozy, brightly colored Into-Oregon State building is given over to an academic resource center, where students can schedule appointments with tutors, get advice on drafts of papers, or squeeze in extra pronunciation practice on computer programs. (The English-language and pathway programs are set to move this summer to a specially built $52-million facility, which they will share with other international programs.)
Tianjing Gu, an accounting major from China, spent much of her time in the learning center during the year she was in the business pathway program. “I didn’t know how to take notes, and your writing style is so different,” she says, adding that she still goes to university writing advisers to get advice on essays and reports.
Ms. Gu and one of her former classmates, Junwei Jia, who is now studying nuclear engineering, show a visitor around the center with the enthusiasm of a romantic visiting the haunts of a first love, pointing out rooms where they took their favorite classes and reminiscing about how their names, too, used to be posted on the honor roll of top-scoring students.
One of Ms. Gu’s former teachers approaches to ask how she is doing in her coursework. “All A’s,” she says, shyly but triumphantly, and there are excited hugs all around. Mr. Jia, too, is acing his courses, a far cry from his early days at Oregon State, when he says he struggled to follow lectures.
The first group of pathways students at South Florida have scored even better grades than those at Oregon State, with average marks of 3.29. Ralph C. Wilcox, provost at South Florida, says that he is pleased—but that he expected the students to do well. “None of us should be surprised,” he says. “We’ve invested mightily in them.”
More than 80 percent of the students who start pathways at South Florida have gone on to enroll at the university; a number of other institutions, including Oregon State and Simon Fraser, report similar retention rates.
Still, these initial cohorts are quite small: Just 75 students transferred to Oregon State last fall, and two dozen moved into regular classes at South Florida this spring. (Overall enrollments at the Into centers are far higher, 735 this spring at Oregon State and 514 at South Florida, but some of those students are taking English-language courses.)
At Simon Fraser, which has the longest-standing transition-year program, an external review last year concluded that its graduates appear to “receive an acceptable level of academic preparation and to perform at least as well as their international student peers.” Some 455 students entered into second-year university courses last fall, earning average grades of 2.53.
“We have very good quality control,” says Jonathan Driver, provost and vice president of academics. The pathway-year curriculum is developed by Navitas instructors, but “they try to parallel the curriculum in our equivalent course.”
Faculty members at the Canadian university have mixed views, however, about the aptitude of the students. “It seems to be all over the map,” says Michael Ling, the faculty-association president. “There are some who think they are well prepared and others who are saying they are not.”
Mr. Stevens, of Delaware, says some of the programs may be offering more than they can deliver, particularly if they try to compress the program into a normal academic calendar. “If it takes four years for a regular student to earn a degree, then how can a pathways students do it in that time, when their first year is filled up with ESL coursework?” he asks. “I worry that they’re finessing something.”
At James Madison, just five of the 32 students who entered the first year of its pathway program last fall completed the program by May, although others are expected to finish over the summer. Ms. Halpern, the dean, says she was “surprised by the small proportion” of students who were able to do the program in an academic year, but she adds that the university always anticipated the pathway would take between two and four semesters, depending on students’ English proficiency.
In South Florida, a couple of students have not completed the pathway, because of subpar English or insufficient work ethic, says Glen H. Besterfield, director of the center there. He is unapologetic. “It’s tough, it’s demanding,” he says. “They have to be strong enough to make it.”
Jennifer Lewington contributed to this article from Canada.
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