Students who planned on taking the computerized Graduate Record Examination on one of the many test dates offered may have to change their plans.

Educational Testing Service canceled computerized testing from Jan. 22 to 29 and cut back the testing dates from February through June to one week each month, after Kaplan Educational Centers raised questions about the security of the computerized exam.

But the reduction in the computerized GRE testing dates is not really a problem at the University, unless students planned to take the test somewhere else.

"I wanted to take the computerized GRE, but they don't offer it at Penn State. The nearest test center is in Harrisburg," said Regina Allen (junior-wildlife and fishery science). "I thought it was really bizarre, because there are so many people here who would want to take it."

Even though the computerized GRE costs $96, twice as much as the written GRE, she was willing to pay the extra money to take it at her leisure and get her scores immediately, Allen said. The computerized test is just as long as the written exam, about four hours, she said.

"I took a written biology test in December, and I am still waiting for my score," Allen said.

But Gary Hile, director of academic records, said he has never been approached by ETS to set anything up. "To the best of my knowledge, no one at Penn State has been asked to review any request for a computerized exam."

Ray Nicosia, manager of media relations for ETS, said he does not know why computerized testing is not offered at the University, but in two years ETS will have 500 test centers, almost twice the current number of test centers.

ETS and Kaplan, whose centers offer courses to help students prepare for the GRE and other standardized tests, were recently involved in a legal dispute over the security of computer testing.

Kaplan suspected that questions from the data pool for the computerized GRE were being recycled too frequently, making the test more vulnerable to cheating, said Jose Ferreira, director of the GRE preparation program for Kaplan.

The written exam is given four times a year with different sets of questions on each test date. After each test date, the questions are discarded, he said.

Because the computerized test is given more often, the same questions are used for six months, Ferreira said.

Kaplan sent 20 people to take the computerized GRE in different parts of the country on the same test date. Of that number, Ferreira said 12 of the researchers were able to reassemble about 80 percent of the test, with the first three people reassembling about 50 percent of it.

Kaplan then sent its version of the test to ETS, who said the questions Kaplan assembled were no longer used, Ferreira said.

"Kaplan presented us with their questions from the GRE, but they do not have anywhere near the percentage they have been claiming," Nicosia said.

A researcher took the GRE on the morning that Kaplan's test was sent to ETS and found that 27 out of 28 of Kaplan's math questions matched the GRE and 29 out of 30 of the verbal were the same, he said.

"The data pool was too small and the test was too easy to cheat on. We were pretty alarmed. You would think ETS would worry about the security of the test," Ferreira said. ETS decided to pull back the test until it could increase the data pool, he said.

ETS also sent out a news release on Dec. 15, acknowledging what Kaplan had done and insuring that Kaplan did not intend to show the test to any of its students, Ferreira said.

ETS filed a lawsuit against Kaplan on Dec. 31 to prevent them from reproducing the test.

"What Kaplan did is an illegal act, by compiling and sharing the test. That is why we sued them," Nicosia said.

On Jan. 2, Kaplan and ETS signed an agreement that Kaplan would not send anymore researchers into the test centers.

"We were willing to make that agreement anyway," Ferreira said. "We were worried that the lawsuit was a diversionary tactic to keep people from talking about the security problem, which seems to be a pretty big problem."

Not only was Kaplan worried that the data pool was too small, but that students would share the questions with each other on the Internet.

"We are not against computerized testing, but we are against inept computerized testing," Ferreira said. "Ultimately computer testing could be good for everybody; for students to get their scores faster, for ETS, and for us because our business will grow, too."