New England Board of Higher Education » Metropolitan College and Extended Education

From Fortress to Vista on the World

NEBHE Admin — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:05:15 +0000

When it comes to creating an international campus, America’s universities are far better at welcoming faculty and students from abroad—and sending students to study abroad—than in truly elevating global consciousness. Simply having foreign individuals on campus doesn’t make global citizens of the rest of us. Exposure is hardly sufficient. Like wallflowers at a dance, there is sadly too little meaningful interchange.

Barely one in eight undergraduates participates in study abroad, and, when they do, it is most often in Western Europe or Australia, and even then in an American enclave or among English-language speakers. Integration in a foreign country is rare. A semester abroad certainly can create a memorable experience and maturation, but does a few months in one country truly generate an appreciation of the wider world?

Americans are largely monolingual—and now expect the educated worldwide to speak English. In fact, linguistic atrophy is more characteristic of student life than foreign language competency. Only 8% feel their abilities in a second language improved in college.

The curriculum likewise doesn’t present much reassurance. Harvard’s former president, Derek Bok, noted that: “Only a small minority of students appear to take any coursework that would prepare them as citizens to understand America’s role in the world and the global problems that confront it.”

We give lip service to the importance of global consciousness, but do little to promote it. I offer a few suggestions and observations to redress this:

Avoid tokenism. Don’t create a singular curricular hurdle or opportunity and declare victory. Instead, generate a limitless menu of possibilities for students and faculty.

Avoid cultural relativism in the classroom. Too often foreign students are treated differently because of alleged cultural differences. They don’t speak up in classes in their home countries, so perhaps we should expect less contribution to class discussion. Academic dishonesty is more rampant abroad, goes the myth, so we shouldn’t hold foreign students to the same standards or repercussions. By submitting to cultural biases, even under the guise of sensitivity, we compromise the quality of the academic experience for all students.

Take advantage of immersion opportunities, even in our own backyard. We host so many immigrant communities, which might expose a more representative view of the world than the elite stratum able to afford American tuition pricing. Be on the lookout for teachable moments and experiences locally through community service or participant-observation. We are often surrounded by unfolding case studies in our own environs and through them connected to world events.

Take advantage of communication technology to create ongoing academic interchange. The logistics of being in the same place at the same time are daunting for faculty to teach abroad or students to enroll abroad. Blended or distance learning can allow faculty and students to co-mingle without co-locating. We now have the capability to create virtual academic community for those who can’t commit to moving.

Don’t limit the cultivation of global citizenship only to those below age 22. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw: like youth, global opportunities are often wasted on the young. We shouldn’t try to forcefeed or cram too much into the undergraduate years. Graduate and professional education—and programs for older students, often studying part-time—extends the opportunities to integrate international efforts. Create graduate study abroad—short, intensive destination courses for student cohorts.

Seek out study-abroad-in-reverse, and build institutional alliances that create a dynamic two-way flow of students studying abroad for a single semester or year. Establish dual-degree agreements that promote this bilateral exchange. Create distance learning exchanges so that online courses might become melting pots for students from various institutions and cultures.

Be cautious of major overseas commitments, but bullish on partnerships. Beware of the urge to create bricks-and-mortar, standalone branch campuses: These are often beyond the core mission of the institution, limited in any deeper benefits to the main campus and fraught with risks and the poorly anticipated. Alliances, however, provide the ease of starting and exiting, the benefit of in-country expertise and existing overhead, often a truer opportunity for global interchange, and perhaps even a baby step toward more extensive involvement.

Embrace the conversation as much as the outcome. So often, I have heard from faculty and administrators that simply the opportunity to explore new overseas opportunities brought colleagues together on a project, which became a valuable learning experience in itself.

Balance the intensive with the extensive. The core dilemma for developing global awareness and commitment is whether to focus concertedly on one place or more broadly across many continents. Too focused becomes binational rather than global, but too broad becomes both superficial and unrealistic. Rotate the focus of attention.

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once offered the helpful concept of the diachronic and synchronic—that is, a comparative perspective across both time and space. This, for me, encapsulates the mind-opening purpose of the university: to take someone out of the comfort of one’s own place and era, with the means to understand other cultures and, as a consequence, to gain perspective on being a contemporary American. At their best America’s higher educators provide a foundation for global awareness that produces lifelong curiosity and sensitivity—and, if possible, a deeper understanding of the connections between the local and the global, the past and our future.

Jay A. Halfond is dean of Metropolitan College and Extended Education at Boston University.

Buying Access to Ivy—A Way to Revive Harvard

John O. Harney — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 10:10:47 +0000

Of the many, many articles written on Harvard University’s endowment woes, I have yet to read one actually sympathetic with Harvard. Perhaps this reflects our gleeful voyeurism when the high-and-mighty fall, or sense of justice that the reckless should pay for their recklessness, or belief that no university truly needs or deserves such a large nest egg, or perhaps the reality that, even after this precipitous fall, Harvard still retains the largest endowment in the solar system. But the impact on the Harvard operating budget and its people is substantial. Harvard’s loss, after all, exceeded the total endowment of all but a half-dozen American institutions, and recovery could take a generation or more to reach its previous peak.

But I have a solution for Harvard University to quickly restore the endowment. Harvard can re-establish its total principal in just two years: simply by selling seats to prospective freshmen. Let’s say that for $10 million each, 600 18-year-olds could gain automatic admission to the world’s most renowned institution. Their parents would ante up their wealth before admissions—so these freshmen might never know if they otherwise would have been accepted. The only admissions stipulations would be the ability to communicate in English and the absence of any criminal record. Over a two-year period, Harvard could recoup the $12 billion lost to mismanagement and recession. Harvard should also promise not to let another secretary of the treasury handle this now-restored endowment.

There would, of course, be universal outrage and ridicule, some lawsuits, and perhaps even a few government hearings and investigations into Harvard’s non-profit status. But that publicity alone should alert the world to this opportunity. Given the Harvard brand, or what would be left of it, there should be little difficulty filling this quota.

To mitigate the PR fallout, Harvard could announce that much of this money would fund scholarships for those who did not submit this $10 million application fee. Harvard could rationalize its actions by claiming to be selling admissions not degrees—in fact, the Harvard faculty, to prove a point, would be even more prone to inflict academic rigor on these undergraduates.

The world of public opinion might still come reigning down on Harvard for this self-serving solution. The more cynical would question why this is even newsworthy. Affluent parents, after all, invest in their children’s advantage from nursery schools through high school, buying extra test time by certifying bogus learning disorders, giving strategic donations and gifts, contriving exotic experiences to pad their children’s applications, and hiring counselors to help with college essays and interviews. Cynics will argue that for years Harvard has been for sale, at a much lower price, for that 10% of its freshman class admitted because of their family’s connections. This simply closes the connection between financial gifts and access, recalibrates the market value of the Harvard degree, and opens up access to a wider share of the upper class—now without the government subsidy of a tax-deduction and at a much higher return to Harvard.

Perhaps some would even awaken to appreciate what a fragile treasure an institution like Harvard is. Once Harvard weathered the barrage of indignation from alumni, faculty, academics who suffer from Harvard envy, and opinion-makers across the globe who would relish yet another opportunity to blast this bastion of elitism, Harvard could embark on one of the most interesting social experiments ever. If Harvard admitted a third of its freshman class based solely on the ability of parents to pay $10 million, and protected their ongoing anonymity, it would be fascinating to see whether the non-meritorious would succeed, or not, in their academic careers and beyond—and just how much the Harvard experience and imprimatur are worth.

The immediate internal dynamics would be intriguing to observe. Would faculty be able to discern, without frequent and embarrassing mistaken identity, which students bought their way into Harvard? Would parents choose to tell their children that they paid $10 million to ensure their admission? Would those students who methodically built a resumé of youthful accomplishments ostracize those who chose this lazy shortcut into Harvard? Would some of those admitted the old-fashioned way secretly suspect their parents of paying up front—just in case? Would all freshmen be eternally second-guessed by insiders and outsiders because some did not earn their way into the class, or would the Harvard halo extend to the entire group?

This longitudinal study could start with academic performance at Harvard and continue throughout graduate and professional schools and into careers. Do Harvard students succeed at subsequent stages of their lives because of who they are—or because of the educational value and prestige of the institution? Is it their pre-established nature or their institution’s nurturing that deserves the credit for their accomplishments? Would the current 97% graduation rate decline? Would the tainted one-third have the same earning power, similar levels of achievement, and comparable happiness in their lives? Their parents, after all, would have wagered that the Harvard Advantage is worth at least $10 million. This would test the wisdom of their investment.

After two years of prostituting its admissions process, Harvard University could return to its more meritorious ways (though a suspicious public might then doubt if this practice had actually ceased)—now far wiser in Harvard’s actual influence on students, and the strength or fragility of its reputation.

Jay A. Halfond is dean of Metropolitan College and Extended Education at Boston University.