Hi pharmacists,
I received private messages from us asking, “Where are we at right now?” Even though requirements on TOEFL iBT for pharmacists seem to follow no logical path, I personally think that it is ridiculous that ETS published its own requirements or even did its own research for score requirements. It is going to be biased. The higher score, the more money I can make, right?
I worked for multinational pharmaceutical companies for years. Any research done by companies themselves would receive low credit by doctors and health practitioners. In this case, any score guidelines suggested by ETS should be scrutinized by institutions before being used as cut-off scores.
Unfortunately, NABP is too busy to conduct its own research. Consulting with ETS and following research done by ETS is easy and the only choice for NABP. Complaints being sent for years by test takers might not be read by NABP officials. In addition, despite the shortfall of pharmacists in the future, the rigid policy of NABP shows that NABP responds to this crisis by shutting the door to foreign pharmacists by using high score requirements for TOEFL
iBT speaking or, in other words, using invalid English test in the FPGEC certificate program.
Personally, to be fair for all parties and all patients, alternative exams should be used in the FPGEC certificate program. The main problem is that the monopolistic power, which ETS holds, causes all these problems. Without properly addressing the problems we have raised to NABP, trust to the FPGEC certificate program by test takers will be reduced over time. No one wants to take the tests that they cannot pass or has little chance to achieve his/her goal.
The only solution for now is to allow alternative exams, not reducing the requirements. Allowing competitions among test companies will demonstrate transparency in the FPGEC certificate program as well because the question being asked by test takers, " Why does NABP use the monopoly?, Do NABP and ETS have mutual benefit?" Once alternatives are being used, I am sure that NABP can be perceived as an institution that provides a fair method of certifying foreign pharmacists.
If, this year, NABP reduces the score requirements, next year, ETS will increase its standard. Probably, a score of 24 will be at 89 percentile again as ETS has done with the test of Spoken English (TSE). Ten years ago, 50 on TSE was at 75 percentile, later, it increased to 86 percentile, which was such a high score. Nurses got away with TOEFL. All the nurses went to the board and said, “No” to TOEFL. At that time, test conditions of TOEFL were really bad. I took that version of TOEFL as well. I strongly believe that TOEFL iBT provided worse testing condition than the paper based TOEFL.