Strip 092 Number No. 13 (368) from 04/10/2002

The shortest route to a Western university

To become a full-fledged student at a Western university, you will have to spend a lot of time in the library

When the first universities opened in Europe in the 13th-14th centuries, they attracted science-hungry vagants—vagrant students from different countries. Since then, the idea of obtaining higher education abroad has not become less attractive. Quite the contrary. To the old and eternal motives - the desire for knowledge and the desire to change places - a new and quite pragmatic one has been added: a diploma from a foreign university often becomes a high step to a career.

Reputation is more important than money
The average cost of studying at a private US university is $25 thousand per year, at a public university (for a foreigner) - $11 thousand, and studying at a British university will cost approximately the same amount. It would seem that universities should simply tear foreign students away, because their money is not superfluous in the university treasury. But no. A good university will not accept an unprepared applicant: reputation is more valuable.
Graduates of Russian schools may face particular difficulties when entering a foreign university. Yes, there is a European Convention on the Equivalence of Diplomas Leading to Access to Universities; 32 countries have joined it, including Russia. But this agreement only means that graduates of Russian schools have the fundamental opportunity to submit documents (in addition to the certificate, an internationally recognized certificate of knowledge of the relevant foreign language is required) to universities in the countries participating in the convention. The university will certainly consider these documents and even, with some probability, will accept their submitter as a student. But this probability is very small. The admissions committee of any university will always prefer a person who has provided the “correct” document on secondary education: A-level in England, Abitur in Germany, etc.
It’s another matter if a foreigner studied (at least in the last two, pre-university classes) in a secondary school in the country where he plans to receive higher education. Then there is a guarantee that he studied the same as everyone else, and, like them, passed all the required exams. The path to a foreign university through a foreign school is the most direct, but at the same time long and expensive. There is another, shorter and cheaper one - these are Foundation programs.
The duration of the Foundation is from a semester to an academic year. The programs are aimed primarily at foreigners who know the language at an intermediate level (the standard requirement for knowledge of English is 4.5-5.5 IELTS points), therefore they combine in various proportions the language and academic disciplines majoring in that department and in that field. specialty where the student is going to study. Students are taught how to intelligently create an individual curriculum, are introduced to teaching methods adopted in a given country, and the rules for passing exams.
In all countries, studies at the Foundation are structured in the same way as at a university: lectures, seminars, work in laboratories, individual classes. As a rule, students are given the opportunity to use the university library and sports facilities. You can feel like a real student right upon arrival. To really become one, you need very little: complete the course and pass all the required final exams.

Admission guaranteed
Foundation programs - UK know-how. The choice of educational institutions and programs themselves is very wide. Foundation is available in all state colleges of further education (Further Education Colleges, FE). There are a lot of such colleges in England - 565, they are similar to our technical schools. Annual tuition fees (without room and board) range from $5.3 thousand in the north and west of the United Kingdom to $7 thousand in the south and southeast.
International private colleges are more expensive. Let's say, three terms at Brook House College (Harborough) cost about $18.5 thousand, but here the price includes not only study, but also accommodation in single or double rooms with full board. You can find a cheaper place. Usually it is possible to start studying in any trimester - in September, January or April.
The University Foundation Program is most often created by a college (whether public or private) in conjunction with a university. Bellerbys College developed its program together with Liverpool John Moores University, Brook House - with De Montfort University in Leicester. Sometimes a university opens such a program at home: for example, a strong Foundation has been working at the University of Warwick for 15 years. After which the founding university and several others recognize the program. This means that all Foundation graduates are guaranteed to become university students if they score enough points in the final exams to enter the university. The mechanism for distributing graduates is as follows. If a student scores more than 65% of the maximum possible score in the final exams, he chooses any university from the list of partners. Average universities get average students. The worse the grades, the poorer the choice and the more bleak the prospects.
Among the universities that are ready to accept Foundation graduates, there are very famous ones, for example, Nottingham, Manchester - they are among the top twenty universities in the UK. The best Foundation graduates of the University of Warwick even managed to enter the super-prestigious London School of Economics. But the two oldest and most famous universities - Cambridge and Oxford - have not yet recognized this program. There is one more restriction: no medical school in the UK accepts Foundation graduates. Those who dream of a doctor's degree have to study on a two-year A-level program - the same as in the 12th and 13th grades of a British school. By the way, A-level, along with Foundation, is available in the same international colleges.

To learn the Celtic Tiger
Patriarchal Ireland performed an economic miracle - the “leap of the Celtic Tiger”: it now ranks first in Europe in terms of economic growth rates. Of course, if the country did not have the highest level of education, neither a miracle nor a leap would have happened.
Foundation programs in Ireland are much younger than those in Britain. Their main focus is preparing foreigners to study in various business specialties. Irish Foundations are cheaper than British ones. Studying under the University International Foundation Program, which opened two years ago in Dublin, at the private Griffith College, costs about $7 thousand. Training profile: business, economics, finance and accounting, marketing, tourism, computer and telecommunication technologies. Among the universities ready to accept graduates are four UK universities (including Nottingham), the American Loch Haven University, the Australian universities Monash and Charles Sturt and most Irish business colleges that award graduates a bachelor's degree in business.
However, Dublin's Portobello College is ready to accept holders of Russian matriculation certificates without a Foundation. The college's undergraduate business program is jointly established with the University of Glamorgan Business School, and the law program with the University of Wales, so graduates receive both an Irish and a British bachelor's degree. Portobello's strongest program is its computer training. More than 90% of college graduates with a Computer Science degree receive job offers while still in college.
Talented, ambitious, and fluent in English graduates of Russian schools, whose certificates have more “A’s” than “B’s” and no “C’s” at all, have recently begun to be admitted without prior pre-university preparation to the faculties of business and economics, engineering and natural sciences the best Irish university - Trinity College. This decision, contrary to established practice, was made after the college studied Russian school curricula and found that in the field of mathematics and natural sciences they were no weaker than Irish or British ones.
Nowadays, Ireland actively and quite successfully competes with Great Britain on the Russian educational market. The foundations for success are lower prices for education, the relative cheapness of student life and real chances of employment after graduation from a university or college in Ireland itself: with rapid economic growth in the country, the influence of a negative demographic wave has already begun to affect itself and free jobs have appeared. There are especially many of them in enterprises related to computer technology.

New student Mecca
Europe is rightfully proud of its universities, the oldest of which have already celebrated their 700th anniversary. But the United States became a true student Mecca in the twentieth century. Even Helmut Kohl, the former chancellor of Germany, sent his sons to study overseas: one to Harvard, the other to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
What’s nice is that in the USA (as, by the way, in neighboring Canada) the Russian matriculation certificate is recognized. Graduates of our schools are often required in addition to only a certificate of knowledge of English TOEFL. The level of these requirements varies from university to university: from 500 to 650 points. In addition to the TOEFL certificate, the university may also require the results of general education exams - SAT. In principle, you can learn the language and pass all these exams without traveling abroad, in Moscow. And then, in the fall, send the documents to the university and wait until spring for an answer.
You can do it differently: wait nothing and go to the Foundation in the USA or Canada - for example, to one of the language schools that are part of large corporations (such as ASPECT or ELS) and located on the campus of a university. The usual price of the program, including accommodation and half board, is about $10 thousand. The peculiarity of the American Foundation is that they teach nothing but English. But there is a student placement service for American universities, whose employees take on the most tedious part of your worries: correspond with universities, arrange interviews, register for exams, etc.
Another way is for those who are willing to pay from $17.5 to $28.5 thousand per year to study at one of two dozen private universities included in the Foreign Study League. All universities in the league are among the top 100 best American universities, but are mostly located in the second half. There are no restrictions on specialties: you can study law, medicine, business, and basically anything you want. An important advantage of the program (it’s called Universities in America) is its simplicity: you don’t need to take official exams or wait for a response from the university. You will be tested at any of the Russian agencies cooperating with FSL, and, if necessary, will be sent to a preparatory course first.
True, no one will give you a 100 percent guarantee that you will receive a visa to enter the United States.

Receiving a diploma is a big celebration. All you have to do is find a good job

Journey to the ends of the world for pragmatists
The flow of Russian applicants to Australia is still small. But this flow is expanding very quickly: according to the Australian Embassy, every year the number of people traveling on student visas increases by 50%. What attracts Russians to Australia is not so much kangaroos and other natural wonders, but rather the excellent (essentially British) education system, which is also not too expensive. The opportunity to stay here permanently is also attractive for many: Australia is interested in the influx from abroad not so much of labor as of brains, and graduates of Australian universities who wish to immigrate to the country have advantages over other foreigners.
But first you need to enroll in an Australian university. This can be done in a variety of ways - through a private school, private college, TAFE or even a language school. But experts believe that there is nothing better than a Foundation at a university. Greg White, an employee of the consulting company International Development Programme: This is the most reasonable scheme for integrating a Russian student into an Australian university: a person does not just abstractly study English, as is done in language schools or colleges, but prepares to study at the chosen university, having the opportunity to communicate in walls of this university with its teachers and students.
The University Foundation in this country is an extensive, well-established business: most Australian universities have preparatory courses. Moreover, even the most prestigious, “five-star” universities, such as the University of Sydney and Monash University, guarantee Foundation graduates admission to any chosen faculty, including medicine. Of course, provided that they score the required number of points in the subjects they study. The majority (70 to 85%) cope with this task.
The Monash University Foundation preparatory program is offered in two versions: standard (ten months, starting in January or September, language requirements - IELTS 5.5) and accelerated, eight months (starting in April, IELTS 6.0).
The standard Foundation of the University of Sydney lasts 32 weeks (entry requirements - IELTS 5.5), during which students learn the basics of their major disciplines and improve their English. This program starts in February, April and October. The 42-week extended Foundation also begins three times a year (you can apply with IELTS 5.0). The first ten weeks of all students, regardless of their future specialty, are taught English, mathematics and computers, and then they are combined with “standard” students and prepared to study at a specific faculty.
Good grades obtained by graduates of preparatory programs at these two universities give them the right to enter any other Australian university. But not vice versa: neither Monash nor Sydney usually accept graduates from “outside” Foundations.
The preparatory program at MacquarieUniversity (Sydney), like others, is designed for two semesters. But it allows well-prepared and persistent applicants to enter, after completing the Foundation, not the first, but immediately the second year of this university. Those who are less diligent and prepared will be accepted into the first year if they manage to pass the final exams.
NATALIA GINZBURG

THEIR MORALS
Money or ability
At the end of March, a scandal broke out in Oxford. The administration of one of the university's colleges, Pembroke, hinted to a potential applicant that he could get a place if the college received $420 thousand as a gift. The applicant was posed as a Sunday Times correspondent, who made the story public, sparking a heated debate about the increasingly obvious dependence of many educational institutions on private donations and money paid by students for tuition. At one time, Oxford had a tradition of founders' kin, that is, the practice of providing places for the children of financial sponsors. This gives critics grounds to argue that, perhaps, the welfare of parents is not the last factor influencing the enrollment of applicants. However, in general this practice is rare in Britain. Just look at the results of school exams of future students - mostly they are excellent students.
In the USA, after the Second World War, much was done to democratize education; most universities then proclaimed a need-blind policy, that is, they focused not on the material well-being of future students, but on their abilities, allocating scholarships and grants to those in need. However, providing high-quality education requires increasingly higher costs, and American universities are becoming increasingly dependent on outside funding. Some universities no longer make a secret of the fact that the wealth of parents is a significant factor when deciding on the admission of children to study, especially those who did not excel academically at school. East Coast universities like Hamilton, John Hopkins, Smith, and Oberlin have publicly announced this. An attempt to introduce the same policy at Brown University caused widespread outrage, and the administration had to return to the need-blind policy. But even in universities where a formally democratic approach operates, the welfare of parents is taken into account. “Of course, no one on the admissions committee will admit this to you,” says Tom Mortenson, editor of the Postsecondary Education Opportunity newsletter. “But if the children of Jack Welch or Bill Gates show up there, they will be treated very differently.”

Magazine "Kommersant Money" No. 13 dated 04/10/2002, p. 92