I finally found time to read Nicholas Lemann’s “Higher Admissions: The Rise, Decline and Return of Standardized Testing.”  This follow-up to Lemann’s own “The Big Test” is a slim pamphlet of a thing, but still very worthwhile.

I greatly appreciated the introduction, written by Earl Lewis and Nancy Cantor.  Like Lemman, Lewis and Cantor express considerable skepticism about the value of standardized testing.  Of the book at hand, they note:

“This book, and the series of which it is a part, assumes that talent is distributed across the nation and world but access to opportunity is not. It invites the reader to understand the history of standardized testing and the creation of a testing industry that began with hopes of expanding opportunity and democratizing access at elite colleges, and it shows how, rather than shattering class privileges, the exams reinforced the relation between doing well on the tests and coming from families and neighborhoods with considerable resources. At its core the book asks us to think deeply about what is meant by merit. Can one test, taken over a few hours, tell us all we need to know about a potential candidate? It also cautions us that finding suitable alternatives to tests that have been validated over decades may take more than a minute. As important, it invites us to probe our commitment to equal opportunity in the United States by asking, what is the purpose of access to education?”

Unmentioned in the introduction is that Earl Lewis has been chair of the board of trustees of the Educational Testing Service since sometime last year.  Knowledge that the fellow running the ETS board is seemingly a test skeptic may help clear things up for industry watchers who have been somewhat puzzled by the moves ETS has made in recent years.  Indeed, ETS’s less-than-stellar Glassdoor page seems to be full of reviews written by former staffers wondering what the board is thinking.

I don’t mean the above to be a dig at ETS, of course.  I share Dr. Lewis’s concerns about the use of tests in admissions.  Go ahead and get rid of them all, I say.  And I think that the recently articulated mission statement of ETS – to “rebuild the pillars” of education hand in hand with the Carnegie Foundation – is very exciting (if a bit quixotic).

But, with that said, if one were to subtract contemporary standardized testing from the ETS, there wouldn’t be much of anything left over there.  As some will recall, the recent cessation of ETS’s 70-year involvement in the development and administration of the SAT contributed to the need for significant downsizing earlier this year.

The cost of taking the TOEFL test in the USA has increased from $255 to $270 (plus tax).

I have neglected to update my price tracker in recent months, so in the new year I’ll start a new one which lists the price of taking the test in some key markets.

Here’s a list of the top ten countries that sent traffic to this website in 2024.  If you are wondering what parts of the world are most interested in the TOEFL, this is for you.  The list matches my general understanding of where the test is popular, with one exception;  China is the biggest market for the TOEFL, but it can be challenging to reach Chinese students online.

The list consists of the same ten countries as 2023 but Indonesia has replaced Brazil in the final slot.  That doesn’t come as a surprise, as Indonesia is generally considered the next potential gold mine for testing and student recruitment firms.

With that said, here’s the list:

• USA
• India
• South Korea
• Japan
• Turkiye
• China
• Taiwan
• Germany
• Iran
• Indonesia

This is useful because TOEFL is a test with little pockets of popularity.  It isn’t a broadly popular test like the IELTS, where the top ten list would be pretty much the same as the top ten list of sending countries.

I was really happy to see Japan featured in the ICEF Podcast‘s final “Keys to the Market” segment of 2024.  The ICEF podcast is one of my favorites in the international education space.  Lots of good stuff in there, and it only comes out once a month.  Don’t sleep on it!

The hosts talk about the Japanese government’s plans to increase the numbers of both inbound and outbound students in coming years.  Most people have long been aware of Japan as a sending nation, but it has attracted a ton of attention in recent years as a receiving nation.

A mildly interesting factoid: Japan has been my number one source of revenue every year I started doing this stuff in 2011.  However, each year since about 2015 it has represented a smaller and smaller percentage of my overall revenue picture.  The steady decline of the yen means students are more likely to seek out assistance from domestic sources.  And in more recent years students have been taking a much wider range of language tests than in the past so they are less likely to need my services.  The latter development may come as a bit of a surprise to some, as the old duopoly was thought to have an unbreakable grip on the market.