标题: Pathway Program for Foreign Students in US [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 1-5-2017 12:14 标题: Pathway Program for Foreign Students in US Laura Krantz, Smoothing Path for Foreign Students; College programs ease way, draw criticism. Boston Globe, Jan 5, 2017 (front page). https://www.bostonglobe.com/metr ... POL2p4DL/story.html
My comment:
(a) The German (including Jewish) and Dutch surname Kranz (Krantz being a variant) is from Middle High German kranz garland, wreath.
(b) I am unsure if you may read it, which demands a certain qualification. The summary is as follows.
Snowy Chen participated a special pathway program [this is what this kind of program is called, which in the past five years has sprouted up across the United States] run in part by Kaplan [a private company; 'but now the [Northeastern] university is in the process of assuming full oversight' ], in which her first year of Northeastern courses were taught in China (presumably mainly in Chinese). The program guaranteed her admission to Northeastern University [private, in Boston] if she passed intensive classes mixed with some academic courses which may earn college-level credits. "Third-party companies [with a contract with a certain college which gets a constant stream of paying international students] can score much lower on English proficiency exams [such as a 60 out of 120 in TOEFL], and many programs do not require students to take the SAT or GRE. Some do not require teacher recommendations or essays. * * * Northeastern said 7 percent, or about 800, of its current 12,000 international students came through its pathway program, which costs about $24,000 per year."
(d) In 1984 I went to a biology graduate program at University of Illinois at Chicago. In the same dormitory, there was a Chinese woman from Wuhan who was also admitted to the same university but different graduate program (chemistry). Before the fall quarters started (the quarter system later changed to semester system), she had come to the university to better English. After the fall quarter started, she still could not comprehend English in the classroom (I could relate, but I fared better because back in Taiwan I had had an American friend). Sje discontinued her study in chemistry and studied English for another quarter *besides the summer quarter), and began chemistry in the winter quarter (who was struggling -- now in chemistry -- but was determined to succeed).