ETS Senior Vice President Rohit Sharma discusses innovations in education assessments, including the newly approved TOEFL iBT test and the shorter GRE format. Emphasizing the relevance of TOEFL and GRE for international students, Sharma highlights efforts in enhancing test accessibility, improving student experience, while retaining the reliability and validity of these tests.
How can assessments like the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) stay relevant and in demand amid the evolving needs of students and institutions?
Rohit Sharma, Senior Vice President of Global Higher Education and Work Skills at leading private education assessment firm ETS, provides his insights on the matter in a conversation with MSM Reporter senior editor Rachel Ranosa.
Autonomy
Earlier in May, ETS announced that its TOEFL iBT Test has been approved by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for use in Canada’s Student Direct Stream (SDS).
“We have been working with IRCC behind the approval for well over a year, collaborating with them behind the scenes to ensure that the TOEFL iBT test is on the approved list for the Canada SDS Pathway for students,” said Sharma.
How do language proficiency assessments benefit test-takers and institutions in general?
“As you think about any language proficiency assessment—in the SDS (Student Direct Stream) case for Canada—this is used for entry into institutions of higher education learning. And this is an approval for 14 countries around the world where students on an expedited basis get the answer to their application. Prior to this, only one testing organization was on the approved list. We feel that for test takers, this is a great move, that it gives them the autonomy to choose from a variety of different assessment options that are there in the approved list to demonstrate their English language proficiency,” said Sharma.
“We are putting the power back in the hands of test-takers,” he emphasized.
Sharma went on to explain how institutions would now “have access to a much wider, diverse pool of applicants” to choose from.
“It’s a win-win for everybody; for the institutions, the test-takers, as well as for Canada’s higher education system to have more options for students and institutions alike.”
TOEFL Market Ambassadors
We went on to ask Sharma about the role of TOEFL Market Ambassadors in educating the market about the advantages of TOEFL. Sharma explained that the program was recently launched by ETS “in a couple of markets specially focused on South and Southeast Asia.”
Sharma explained how ETS had carefully selected organizations in these markets (referred to as “study abroad agents” or “counselors”) who are at the “forefront of international student mobility.” He says that people who choose to explore the international study route may get overwhelmed with information and tasks, and sees how these organizations on the ground play an important role in helping students understand their options.
He goes on sharing about how ETS fits into the whole ecosystem, as study abroad applicants need to undergo English Language proficiency assessment, and how his company sees its ambassadors on the front lines as the ones also educating prospective applicants and their families.
“Hence, we have appointed them as our ambassadors in these markets,” Sharma adds.
Continuing relevance
The new Graduate Record Examination (GRE) general test designed by ETS will take less than two hours to complete — roughly half the time of the current test — and, according to Sharma, offers a less stressful and more user-friendly experience without compromising on assessment validity.
Changes to the test include the removal of the “Analyze an Argument” task in the Analytical Writing section, the reduced number of questions in the Quantitative and Verbal Reasoning sections and the removal of the unscored section.
“The test will continue to have the same level of reliability and validity that ETS has been known for for several decades,” he said. “So, the good news for education institutions was that we are not changing the validity and reliability. We are not changing the score scale that institutions have come to rely upon,” assured Sharma.
In relation to the long-term relevance of assessments — Sharma noted that over 12,000 institutions accept the TOEFL assessment — the executive explained how these tools have become “one of the most objective measures that can play a role, a contributing role in the evaluation of an applicant coming from very different backgrounds.” He added that “there are close to around five to six million students that are studying outside of their home country globally.”
“These assessments provide an objective measure to ensure that the institutions that are evaluating these candidates are looking at them in a uniform way besides other data points that they take into consideration,” said Sharma.
He added how ETS aims to continue to listen to the market and test-takers, get feedback from its advisory boards and councils, and improve with the changing times so its assessments continue to be relevant for the betterment of international education.
Here are more excerpts from the podcast:
When Cornell University’s English Department dropped the GRE as an admissions requirement, it said that GRE scores are not good predictors of success or failure in a PhD program in English and the uncertain predictive value of the GRE exam is far outweighed by the toll it takes on student diversity. Can you comment on this?
Yes, it is a very interesting question and I think let’s take a step back and I’d rather answer it more broadly than in the context of Cornell. If you look at the US higher education system, we are in a crisis here in the US. And what I mean by crisis we have the highest student debt around the world, $1.5 trillion. That’s much more than the GDPs of many countries around the world.
So the crisis is in terms of rising cost of education and then it is compounded by the effect that many higher education institutions are failing to deliver on the promise. The promise in many cases is around a great first job employability readiness. As you think about what is happening, the compounded effect of not being able to deliver on the promised outcome and rising cost is what we are seeing in the US along with a declining trend when it comes to enrollment.
As an education institution administrator, director of international enrollment, or a dean of a particular faculty, you want to ensure that there is no “obstacles” for anybody to get into your program because their enrollments are coming down. And so we view that many of the institutions who are looking at this thinking “Let’s make it optional, or let’s remove any of the assessments” are also under pressure from that aspect of ensuring that their enrollments are up.
But at the same time, they still have to ensure that there is some way that they can evaluate a candidate that is coming in. And so in this particular question, when you said Cornell dropped it for the English PhD program because it’s not a good predictor of success or failure, we have never maintained that a particular score is a predictor for success in life. The GRE is a good predictor of graduate level work readiness. What does that mean?
If you are going for a master’s or a PhD program, the level of rigor, of academic rigor that you will need to sustain, is much higher than perhaps if you’re going for an undergraduate program. The GRE – through the things that it measures, as I mentioned around analytical writing, verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning – is a good predictor to show and demonstrate to education institution that this particular individual is ready for graduate level work. The success in any program is dependent on so many different factors.
How is ETS making the exams more globally accessible?
The way we do it is ensuring that no matter if you are in a big urban area or you are in a remote location, as long as you have an internet connection anywhere around the world, you are able to access.
What we call the Home Edition is essentially ensuring that if you are living far away from a testing center as an example, because in many countries, even to get to a testing center, while it may not be from a geographical perspective very far. The mode of transportation or infrastructure may make it very time consuming to get to that particular testing center. And so, since the last several years, were one of the first assessment companies around the world that made our test available online.
How are you expanding your market presence via partnerships and acquisitions?
There’s so many things I could go on for an hour, but at a high level, there are a few things that we are doing. Number one, you mentioned partnerships and that’s a great example. We recently actually announced the enhancement of a partnership with IIE, the premier international education organization that we have been a partner for decades. We partner with IIE in countries like Mexico in Southeast Asia, (Indonesia), and Ireland where they are helping us promote many of our portfolio of products in the local market.
Educating the market the ecosystem with regards to the different products that we have, as well as the benefits that it provides to test takers and institutions alike. We are expanding that partnership into; we are evaluating other countries and a broader portfolio of products.
We are also looking at partnering from a policy and advocacy standpoint to make sure that the US, which has been a leading destination for international students for decades, continues to maintain its leading position. Advocacy – whether it’s the State Department, whether it’s Department of Homeland Security, Department of Education – to ensure that even things like visa processes become much more smoother and streamlined for international students coming into the US.
We are also looking at proactively investing, whether it’s minority investments, majority investments, into institutions and organizations that are a key player in the international student mobility space.
What is your view of the impact of higher education institutions in ensuring the work readiness of graduates today, especially given how there have been many shifts in the talent marketplace and in the job market overall? What is your view of HEIs preparing graduates for that challenge?
The higher education institutions play a very critical role. In fact, you would argue that they play a very role in workforce readiness for any country. So in our work, as we have interacted with senior-level officials from different countries, whether it’s at the ministerial level or at the administrative level, one of the first few things that comes out in those discussion is how can we make sure that the country is ready?
Where the value proposition of an higher education institution as a ticket to social mobility, economic mobility, is increasingly coming under pressure because historically, higher education institutions haven’t been able to change as fast as how the industry has changed. And that’s where a gap starts to become. And if you’re not changing and becoming agile, the gap starts to continue to become bigger.
That’s where we feel that as a key constituent of this education system, with a clear focus on our mission around equity and access, we feel we have a very strong role to play. So we are looking to partner with higher education institutions in ensuring that your students who are graduating, whether it’s at the undergraduate level or at the graduate level, are ready.
Through our expertise, which is around measuring and assessment, we are able to signal to the job market that this particular individual, this particular student who’s graduating, brings many of these skills that employers are looking for. Oftentimes there is a vocabulary difference between what employers may be looking and what education institutions are saying.
