Educating future education leaders

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Throughout their MBA courses, business school students get the chance to apply their new skills to hypothetical problems from the world of commerce.
Some, however, are also asked to go one better and tackle genuine cases. And what better challenge than reorganizing a major education authority with a debt of $100 million?
That was the task facing students from a series of leading U.S. schools earlier this month at the Education Leadership Case Competition, the first contest of its kind in the country.
It involved teams of MBA students from seven top business schools, among them Northwestern University's Kellogg School, and the Hass school at the University of California, Berkeley, which hosted the event.
The scale of the task facing them was enough to make even the most experience executive have to think long and hard.
The teams were asked to come up with a new financial plan for the Oakland Unified School District, which runs schools for 40,000 pupils in and around the Californian city of that name.
The financially-troubled educational authority has been in state receivership since June 2003, and owes $100 million to the state, the largest such debt in Californian history.
One plan mooted recently to help clear some of the loan was the $60 million sale of the school district's administration building to a developer, which would have been demolished to make way for condominiums and commercial space. However, this was abandoned following local opposition.
And while such financial woes might seem unglamorous compared to a career in investment banking or private equity, there is a clear need for talented, well-trained business professionals in the U.S. education system -- since 1991, seven California school districts have had to be taken over by the state.
New financial plan
The contest was a chance for MBAs to understand the challenges, and opportunities, in the sector, said Anna Utgoff, a Haas School MBA who developed it with classmates in the Haas Leadership in Education Club.
"We created the event to get the word out to MBAs that their business skills are really valuable and can make a significant impact in education," she said.
"Similar competitions exist for many other business professions but there wasn't an event that focused on education."
In the end, the host team won, with the three Hass MBA students and another from Berkeley's Goldman Public Policy School taking the $2,000 prize for their plans and presentation.
Teams had to focus on the school district's new financial plan, finding ways to improve its implementation and communicate how it is working to local people.
The Hass team's presentation was "the most well rounded," said Barak Ben-Gal, budget director of the Oakland Unified School District and one of the judges, who also included Professor Bill Ouchi of UCLA's Anderson School of Management, the author of "Making Schools Work."
"The presentation was very comprehensive in terms of getting the gist of the case and talking about all the different aspects that you must invest in to transition from a start-up phase to something that is more sustainable," Ben-Gal said.
A team from Northwestern's Kellogg School finished second, winning $1,000.

Helping the Middle East's young businesswomen

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Being a young woman trying to forge a career in business can be difficult enough at the best of times.
But when you're trying to do so in Iraq -- or perhaps Saudi Arabia, or the West Bank -- it can seem like a near-impossible task.
This month, however, 41 young females leaders in business, and in law, from around a dozen countries and territories in the Middle East and North Africa are in the United States to get some of the very best academic help available.
A group of them are spending a month taking a specially-designed executive education program at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, something to be followed by a five-month internship with a leading U.S. corporation.
Their peers in the legal field are receiving similar training at the university's law school, to be followed by their own internships at major firms.
The women, aged between 22 and 32, are the latest group to benefit from what is formally known as the Legal and Business Fellowship Program, or LBFP, funded by the U.S. government's Middle East Partnership Initiative, part of the State Department, and run in association with different business schools each year.
In 2004, during the first incarnation of the program, which is organized by the non-profit group America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, 22 woman studied at the Fuqua School of Business, part of Duke University in North Carolina.
Welcome respite
For a few of those initial participants, as with the latest group, the program offers more than a just a chance to learn more about U.S. and international business methods -- at Duke, three of the women were from Iraq and two were Palestinian, meaning they were also getting away, for a period, from conflict and violence.
Duke hosted another group of women on the program last year, while others studied at Emory University's Goizueta Business School in Atlanta.
The LBFP is open to women from 16 countries at territories -- Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen.
Many women struggle to forge business careers in these places, where traditional customs and beliefs can often discriminate heavily against them.
Change is happening, if slowly, even in the most conservative states. Women can point to the success of some peers, for example Dr Nehad Taher, senior economist at Saudi Arabia's National Commercial Bank and Elham Hassan, senior partner with accountancy giants PricewaterhouseCoopers in Bahrain.
However, such stories remain uncommon, making initiatives like the LBFP all the more valuable.
"The Middle East Partnership Initiative supports the aspirations of people in the region seeking greater freedom and opportunity," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scott Carpenter said of the latest program.
"This impressive group of women embodies these aspirations, and we are happy to stand with them as they develop new business and legal skills to help their communities flourish."
There are also benefits for the schools involved, according to Sandhya Karpe, senior director of executive education at Wharton.
"Gathering such a large group of women from a wide variety of countries will encourage information-sharing, networking, and bridge-building among the participants and faculty. It is from such unique opportunities that great ideas --and change -- can emerge," she said.

Gap between space flights worries NASA

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- Sometime in 2010, the world's leading space-exploring nation will say goodbye to manned space flight for more than four years.
And that has U.S. policymakers worried.
The flight gap will occur because NASA is winding down its space shuttle program near the end of 2010 to move into the next phase of space exploration -- the moon and Mars. The next-generation spacecraft, the Orion capsule, won't be ready for manned flight until March 2015.
During those gap years, the United States must rely on the good will of other nations if it wants to send astronauts and cargo to the international space station.
"Who knows what the geopolitics is going to be like in 2015?" asks U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Space, Aeronautics and Related Sciences subcommittee. "Is Russia still going to be allied with us? Would they possibly be allied with China at that point?"
The space agency has been in this position before. There was a six-year gap between the last Apollo flight in 1975 and the first shuttle flight in 1981.
In the meantime, NASA will have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to Russia for a lift to the space station, although private companies also may be hired for trips to low-Earth orbit.
"It is not a very desirable situation," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "We will have an orbiting destination that we have spent multiple billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to develop. To not be able to get there except for the good will of others is a little ironic."
NASA fears the United States will risk losing its title as the leading spacefaring nation as Russia, Europe, Japan, China and India improve their ability to send humans and cargo into space during the gap years. Currently, the only three nations with vehicles able to fly people to space are China, Russia and the United States.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin recently told lawmakers that China's ambitious space program could feasibly beat the United States in the race back to the moon, although he and outside experts say there's no indication yet that China is on that path.
The gap also could contribute to a loss of interest in space exploration by the U.S. public and Congress, and that could diminish the resources allotted to the space agency, said W. Henry Lambright, a political science professor at Syracuse University.
"It's really important for NASA to have activity, to keep going, to constantly have a face in Washington based on its successes," Lambright said.
Griffin recently called the gap "unseemly," but he has few options with the budgets NASA has been given by the White House and Congress since President Bush first announced plans to return to the moon three years ago. NASA has put the cost of returning to the moon at $104 billion, although the General Accounting Office puts it at $122 billion through 2018.
"Space is not only not a high priority, it's hard to keep it on the radar screen for the White House right now," Lambright said.
NASA had hoped to have the first manned Orion flight as early as 2012. That would be a low-orbit test flight. But that goal was pushed back to 2014 when NASA had to raid the Orion development fund to fill in a $3 billion shortfall for finishing space station construction and ending the shuttle program. Repairs to NASA buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina also siphoned off money.
Space agency officials said the 2007 budget would remove more than $500 million from what NASA had budgeted for developing the new spacecraft, pushing the first manned flight of Orion into March 2015. A moon landing is scheduled for no later than 2020.
U.S. Sens. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, this month proposed increasing NASA's funding by $1 billion. Mikulski also called for a space summit between Congress and the White House to raise the profile of NASA's budget needs.
Nelson said the gap could be narrowed to three years if NASA were to get an extra $400 million above the 2008 budget request and an extra $800 million each in 2009 and 2010. NASA's budget request for 2008 is $17.3 billion.
During the last gap in space flight, which ended in 1981, the agency had a brain drain in which experienced engineers and technicians left for other opportunities and "essentially, the manned space program went off the radar screen," Lambright said.
"When you don't fly for four or more years, people become stale," Griffin said recently. "Very good people often move into other enterprises where there is more action. Facilities degrade. It's not a good thing."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Comparing TOEIC to TOEFL

What's the difference between the TOEIC® and TOEFL® tests? See the table.
TOEIC IP(Test of English for International CommunicationTM)
TOEFL ITP(Test of English as a Foreign LanguageTM)
Purpose
Evaluates English proficiency for the global workplace
Evaluates English proficiency for those pursuing academic studies
Primary uses
For corporations
To make decisions about recruiting, promoting, and deploying employees overseas
To determine readiness to participate in technical training conducted in English
To demonstrate learning progress in corporate training.
For English language programs/schools, especially for academic-track students
Placement test
Assessment of progress from beginning to end of course
Measurement of program effectiveness
Exit test and measurement of readiness for academic programs.
Other uses
For English language programs/schools, especially business-track students
Placement test
Assessment of progress from beginning to end of course
Measurement of program effectiveness
Exit test
Practice for secure TOEIC
Professional credential
For institutions of higher education
To fulfill language requirement or graduation requirement
To screen for scholarship and exchange programs
Practice for TOEFL or other multiple-choice tests
Professional credential
Who takes the test?
Employees in international corporations
Job applicants
Students in business, vocational, and trade schools, community colleges
Students in the business track of English language programs/schools.
Students in the academic track of English language programs/schools
Students in colleges or universities that have a language requirement
Applicants to scholarship and exchange programs.
Who uses the results?
Training managers
Human resources managers
Recruiters
Employees
English language programs/schools
English language programs/schools
College and university administrators
Directors of scholarship and exchange programs
Students
Formats and proficiency levels tested
TOEIC Bridge — high beginning to intermediate
TOEIC IP — low intermediate to advanced.
Pre-TOEFL ITP — high beginning to intermediate
TOEFL ITP — low intermediate to advanced.
Language context
Language used in the global workplace
Language used in academic contexts
Test format
200 multiple-choice questions
140 multiple-choice questions
Score scale
10 – 990 Total
5 – 495 Listening Comprehension
5 – 495 Reading Comprehension.
310 – 677 Total
30 – 68 Listening Comprehension
30 – 68 Structure and Written Expression (grammar)
30 – 67 Reading Comprehension.
Length of test
120 minutes
115 minutes
When test is given
Available on demand for any date
Multiple forms for testing throughout the year
Two forms of security
semi-secure — administered on-site by own staff, trained by TOEIC staff
secure — administered on-site by TOEIC staff. NOTE: Maximum-security TOEIC Open Test is available in some countries.
Available on demand for any date
Multiple forms for testing throughout the year
One form of security
semi-secure — administered on-site by own staff. NOTE: Maximum-security TOEFL CBT and PBT are available in most countries.
Score reports
Individual score reports
Score roster
Certificates (may be available for an additional fee)
Individual score reports
Institution score reports and roster
Turnaround time for score reports
Usually 3 to 5 days
Rush reporting on request for an additional fee.
Usually 3 to 5 days (7 days in the U.S.)
Rush reporting on request for an additional fee.
Test prep
For a list of TOEIC test preparation products, contact your local ETS representatives.
Available on TOEFL Web site:
Sample Test, 6th Edition
TOEFL Test Preparation Kit, 2nd ed.
TOEFL Practice Tests, Vol. 2.
See also:

Test Content

The TOEIC test is a paper-and-pencil, multiple-choice assessment. There are two separately timed sections of 100 questions each.
Section I: Listening
Examinees listen to a variety of questions and short conversations recorded in English, then answer questions based on what they heard.
Part 1: Photographs (20 items)
Part 2: Question - Response (30 items)
Part 3: Short Conversations (30 items)
Part 4: Short Talks (20 items)
Section II: Reading
Examinees read a variety of materials and respond at their own pace to questions based on the content.
Part 5: Incomplete Sentences (40 items)
Part 6: Error Recognition (20 items)
Part 7: Reading Comprehension (40 items)
Test Length
The test lasts approximately 2 ½ hours. Examinees have:
45 minutes for Section I
75 minutes for Section II, and
the remaining time to respond to biographical questions and a brief questionnaire about education and work history.

TOEIC Details: Corporations and Institutions

Overview
What Is It?
The Test of English for International CommunicationTM (TOEIC) measures the everyday English skills of people working in an international environment.
Who Takes It And Why?
Nonnative English speakers take the test to demonstrate their English language skills when applying for new positions and obtaining credentials.
Where Do People Take It?
The test is given at open public sessions, and at companies and language schools around the world.
Who Accepts It?
The test is widely accepted by corporations, English language programs, and government agencies around the world.
Corporations use TOEIC to document progress in English training programs, recruit and promote employees, and put standard measurements in place across locations.
English Programs use it to place students at the right learning levels, and show student progress and program effectiveness.
Government agencies use it to document progress in English training programs, and to recruit, promote, and hire employees.
Testing Format
The TOEIC test is a paper-and-pencil, multiple-choice assessment that uses audiocassettes, pictures, and written materials to evaluate English language skills.