We live in a knowledge-driven global society. The world has closely knitted economic, social and cultural relations that offer greater entrepreneurial and professional opportunities than ever before. Since meritocracy is considered the basis for success, institutions of higher education like to invest in high-impact practices and programs that raise the quality of academic experiences for students. These include honors programs and study abroad.

In recent years, realization that globalization and global knowledge have an impact on students’ current and future prospects for success, universities and colleges have expanded study-abroad programs, and greater numbers of students are taking advantage of study-abroad opportunities. In 2011-12, 273,996 of the roughly 21 million students enrolled in higher education participated in study-abroad programs, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). That’s an increase from 62,000 in 1987-88. Still, increased number of students in study-abroad programs is a fraction of total student population in higher education—just over 1%, These statistics demonstrate that due to cost associated with such educational experiences, logistical difficulties, and higher risk element in a volatile world, the number of students who will take advantage of such programs will remain relatively small.

IIE data suggest that personal and family resources finance 63% of study-abroad trips and students’ respective colleges or universities support about 23%. This information puts the burden of study-abroad programs on a student’s capacity to pay for the program, excluding students and families who are unable to pay. Education systems have hierarchical structures in terms of prestige and social and academic value attached to them. As IIE’s “Open Doors” data for 20011-12 indicate, the universities that could financially support students’ study-abroad are predominantly private or elite schools or four-year research universities. Community colleges are less common participants in study-abroad programs. Hence, social class plays a role in study-abroad programs. In recent years, state-supported universities and colleges have seen declining revenues from state sources. Therefore, programs such as study abroad will have diminishing support from the state governments and public institutions.

Privilege for a few

Study-abroad experiences will remain a privilege of a few. A majority of students will remain within the country, or within their institutional confines for their entire academic experiences. Hence, it becomes imperative that all students acquire knowledge and skills that enrich their cultural and educational experiences and have competencies to successfully live and work in a global society. Scarcity of study-abroad opportunities should not hinder students’ future success or limit their opportunities for global experiences. The institutions of higher education should consider revising and updating curricula, extracurricular programs and institutional culture where students could encounter global cultural diversity and acquire cultural competency for a global society.

One of the important steps toward global cultural competency is that campuses integrate international knowledge and experiences as a part of the academic and non-academic experiences on campus. The U.S. offers tremendous diversity of cultures, social classes and religions. Some institutions and students take advantage of such diversity of experiences available through service and internship opportunities in communities. Universities and colleges should continue to expand and enhance learning outcomes from these opportunities and connect them with comparative and global contexts.

Conference call

One of the enduring educational experiences students could have is to attend conferences. Major national professional associations such as the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and American Education Research Association have regional chapters’ conferences and offer institutes and workshops on various important topics to students and professionals. Conferences provide intensive immersion experience with regard to students’ field of education or profession. Fortunately, national and regional conferences are held in almost all states. University departments could develop a curriculum in their respective curricular fields for students to obtain maximum benefit from conferences and to achieve specific learning outcomes. Regional conferences or student focus conferences such as the New England Latino Student Leadership Conference, Southwestern Black Student Leadership Conference are some examples of student focused regional conferences that are relatively inexpensive or give significant discounts to students. The result would be significant: Students of diverse backgrounds will develop camaraderie, build professionalism, acquire knowledge by listening to various experts, acquire a range of skills by attending workshops, networking and finding role models to emulate. They could learn about a range of possible paths they can take in their lives, potential professions and get motivated to follow their dreams.

Another option is that universities should build strategic partnerships with one another, allowing students to visit various towns and campuses to learn about the culture of a state or city and about campus environments. For example, a student from a rural school could visit a metropolitan college or university or vice versa. This could be an exhilarating experience. The U.S. offers tremendous diversity of landscape, people, and cultures and universities could find the communities or cultures to which students are least exposed and arrange trips to those cultural environs.

Students in the 21^st century global society will live and work in a rapidly changing social, economic and political world and require global cultural competencies to be successful. They need knowledge, skills, and dispositions to be conscientious global citizens. They need a global outlook to examine issues from diverse perspectives and have the ability to access professional and entrepreneurial opportunities around the globe. Study abroad is just one of the several opportunities and strategies to achieve that goal.

Aziz Talbani is director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs at the University of South Florida.

Related Posts:
Forum: Internationalization
Is New England World Ready?

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.

Related Posts: Trends & Indicators: International Enrollment; Forum on Internationalization (pdf)