Globalizing Education
Many study abroad programs have sought an egalitarian liberal education objective, but many have fallen short.
By Conor Gaffney
May 27, 2008
(iStockPhoto.com)Today’s study abroad programs, “the hottest new education market,” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, are unlike the smaller and less common research-oriented international education programs of the 1960s. Undergraduates today choose from a dizzying array of options: working, volunteering, or studying on every continent, even Antarctica. International experience has become a common element of the American undergraduate education, and a credential much desired by employers. Two schools, Goucher College and Soka University of America, have already instituted mandatory study-abroad requirements for undergraduates, while other schools like Harvard and Duke are currently debating whether or not to follow suit.
Studying abroad, however, is just a single facet of a much larger educational trend that has repositioned the idea of a liberal education in American political and social life. Recruiting foreign students, creating international research groups, designing a multilingual and multicultural campus at home, and sending students to study in foreign countries around the globe are all efforts made by America’s colleges to master the profound, yet ill-understood effects of globalization. As part of the larger program of internationalization, adjustments in curricula, new initiatives, and the diminishing gap between campus and the market, reveal the reorientation of values in American education.
Internationalization is the new “diversification,” a social and educational vision that has profoundly changed the terms of a liberal education. Diversification, popularized by Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell in his in 1978 opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, enshrined the idea of an ethnically diverse campus as reflective of American egalitarianism. By ruling that race could be used as a criterion of positive discrimination in college admissions, making affirmative action constitutional, Powell’s opinion helped establish diversity as a centerpiece of American liberal education.
Louis Menand, a cultural and intellectual historian at Harvard, notes that the consequences of diversification have reached far beyond the color of college campuses: “the changes are visible today in a new emphasis on multiculturalism (meaning exposure to specifically ethnic perspectives and traditions), and on values (an emphasis on the ethical implications of knowledge); in a renewed interest in service (manifested in the emergence of internship and off-campus social service programs) and in the idea of community; in what is called ‘education for citizenship.’” Diversification reoriented the values of a liberal education, enthroning cross-cultural understanding as the critical element of American citizenship.
In 1985 less than 50,000 American students studied abroad, less than half of one percent of enrolled college students at the time. Two decades later, the number increased 150 percent. The most dramatic growth occurred between 1995 and 2005. Over half of American students studying abroad choose traditional destinations like Western Europe and the United Kingdom. However, between 2001 and 2005, Argentina saw a six-fold increase in the number of American students, while China followed closely with a four-fold increase in popularity. Aside from Italy whose numbers have nearly doubled, European destinations have seen essentially the same number of Americans students since 2001.
Along with this increase in demand comes an increase in supply. Study abroad programs have traditionally been a cottage industry of domestic and foreign universities, unaffiliated for-profit organizations, and part-time work for educators. The expanding market has become more crowded and more competitive, but remains disorganized and nebulous in its aims and practices.
Colleges are beginning to demand standards of quality. In 2001 The Forum on Education Abroad was founded to create standards for international education programs. “We tend to think of study abroad as a silver bullet—that it’s going to make students more academically engaged, better citizens, and help our country in globalization,” Brian Whalen, the forum’s president told the Chronicle of Higher Education. “And in some ways, it’s very powerful. But we lack precision to our programs, let alone a way to measure what we’re accomplishing.”
Study abroad providers, operating with poorly defined measures and expectations have evolved an ethics-free practice. Study-abroad professionals say that more institutions are taking advantage of special pricing deals offered by third-party providers. A current investigation of the Attorney General of New York brought this undirected growth into national headlines. The office of Andrew M. Cuomo is investigating the methods 15 colleges, including Harvard, Brown, and Columbia, use to approve study abroad contracts with independent providers. The investigation stemmed from an article published in the New York Times last summer detailing how study abroad program providers offer colleges rebates, free travel, back-office services, marketing stipends, and other benefits. Reminiscent of the student-loan scandal of 2007, Cuomo’s investigation is raising questions about conflicts-of-interest facing colleges, and the financial realities facing administrators and students in the era of internationalization.
As international experience becomes more valuable in an increasingly competitive white-collar job market, university administrators are not the only ones on college campuses feeling the financial stress of obtaining overseas credentials. Students and their families are often left to cover airfare, lodging, and additional fees associated with studying abroad with little financial aid or grant money. The result is a further reinforcement of what some officials at Harvard call the “upstairs-downstairs syndrome,” where only the wealthy can afford highly valuable, but costly, extracurricular activities. In addition to a student’s home institution’s tuition, study abroad programs tack on fees which can total into thousands of dollars, putting the marketable ‘international education’ out of reach for many students. In addition, institutions often selectively award financial aid and course credit to students studying abroad. At Goucher, financial aid is withheld if a student chooses a program that the college does not run. Only 35 percent of American colleges allow students to pay their program provider directly, an option that could save Indiana University students studying in Bologna over $18,000. The Indiana University program at the University of Bologna costs $20,200, while the tuition for international students enrolled directly with the University of Bologna is only $1,740.
Now that internationalization has emerged as the successor to diversification, it has become another wave in the modern movement of American liberal education. Internationalization attempts to achieve a form of egalitarianism in the same way diversification did. The study abroad trend is offering students, at a high cost, the idea of international citizenship. But just as an ethnically diverse campus does not guarantee the experience of America’s social economic and ethnic differences, neither does a semester in China guarantee the ability to negotiate the complexities of a global future. The reality of service and experience abroad are overshadowed by the urgency to exist in a global market of ideas; “overseas travel for its own sake” has yet to be realized by most American colleges.
It may not be within the scope of study abroad programs to make promises of cultural competence or education for global citizens. Lewis Fortner, associate dean of students and director of off-campus studies at the University of Chicago, said that study abroad cannot “make any of these grand claims…The hope is that somehow a student abroad will slip the tether, so to speak, become fascinated with the place and culture she has found. How meaningful an experience is depends on the attitudes and interests that each student brings to the table.” The rewards of studying abroad can be high, though their achievement often isn’t guaranteed. Although the promises of global citizenship are high-minded, they’re often reserved for those who can afford it. Studying abroad brings into view the conflict between a traditional liberal education and a market-based education.
Conor Gaffney is a fourth-year undergraduate at the University of Chicago. An earlier version of this article was reprinted in Diskord, part of the Campus Publications Network.
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Great article, Conor.
I guess Harvard administrators use the rather clumsy term “upstairs-downstairs syndrome” because they’re not comfortable with “classism.”
When we’re talking about diversity on campus, we can’t forget the important factor of economic class: privileged, elite students from different national and ethnic backgrounds do not a truly diverse campus make.
It’s a point that we as activists should ensure is not lost on admissions officers.
— ForStudentPower - May 27, 02:34 PM - #