Point: Counterpoint

Short-Term Study Abroad

By Elizabeth Brewer

In "An Expanded Rationale for Education Abroad in the 1990s and Beyond" Bill Hoffa addresses two important issues in study abroad: its potential as a means for multi-cultural learning and the short duration of most U.S. study abroad programs. I would argue that the benefits of study abroad, particularly short-term study, should not be framed in terms of its potential to enable students to become bi-cultural or multi-cultural, as Dr. Hoffa suggests. Rather, we need to create study abroad opportunities that maximize students' abilities to investigate and understand another culture.

One does not become bi-cultural in a semester, or even over several years. I, for example, am not bi-cultural, although I spent three years of my childhood in a foreign country, lived a further three years in that country as an adult, earned a doctorate in its language and literature, and have returned there a number of times for research, work, and leisure. The experience of being a foreigner in another culture, and realizing that bi-culturalism was not to be mine, has made me far more aware of the complexities of cross-cultural and multi-cultural communication. It has also made me far more sympathetic to different perspectives and expectations. I think striving for this, rather than bi-culturalism or multi-culturalism, should be one of the goals of study abroad.

How can we make short-term study abroad experiences more productive? I think it's useful to return to the original purpose that led Americans to study abroad. Until this country had established graduate education, Americans went abroad to study academic subjects, not for languages and culture. We still need programs designed to teach students things they cannot learn at home and which strengthen their understanding of academic disciplines. Foreign language learning and cross-cultural communication should be seen as ways to enable this learning to take place. If the home university embraces short-term programs as part of the curriculum, they can build on students' poor academic preparation and be a bridge to the next step of the students' development. We should look to model programs at a number of universities as we cope with the reality that short-term programs predominate in U.S. study abroad.

ELIZABETH BREWER is Associate Dean for Student Affairs at The Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research.