Point: Counterpoint

New Facts and Hard Questions

Understanding What Study Abroad Has Become and Might Be

By Bill Hoffa

While organizing study abroad programs is the responsibility of U.S. colleges and universities, international education ultimately benefits the country as a whole. This being so, educators periodically put their heads together to set a new national agenda.

The NAFSA/IIE/CIEE National Task Force on Undergraduate Education Abroad, which issued its report in 1990, stated that "we are ill-prepared for the changes in business, manufacturing, diplomacy, science and technology that have come with an increasingly interdependent world."

The report strongly recommended a set of mandated national goals. Foremost of these was that "10 percent of American college and university students should have a significant undergraduate educational experience abroad by the year 1995 (and "20 to 25 percent by the year 2008") and that there be considerably more program diversity in geographic locations, program types, and student backgrounds (italics mine).

What We Know

The only way progress toward the achievement of these goals is currently measured is though the section on outbound study abroad activity found in IIE's annual report, Open Doors. The most recent edition, covering national study abroad activity during 1995-96, provides much useful information; however, as usual, it does not cover non-credit educational programs--such as internships, paid or volunteer work--and the data still comes from only about one in three U.S. institutions of higher education. The report raises a number of very fundamental questions. Many questions concern what we do not know yet need to know in order to better understand where we are and where we need to put our energies in international educational programming.

Duration and Impact. First of all, it is clear that national numbers come nowhere near the 10 percent goal. They remain at about 2 percent--actually 4 percent when two-year institutions, where activity is very low, are excluded. Further, almost all the recent growth in overall study abroad numbers--doubling over the past decade--seems to have come from enrollments in short-term programs. Accompanying this growth, and probably driving it, has been the welcome diversification of geographical program sites around the world, of program models and curriculum, and of student participant backgrounds. In short, more students, from more diverse backgrounds, are studying abroad in more places and in more varied programs than ever before. Something certainly worth celebrating.

The national trend away from the traditional "JYA" continues apace. Overall, the proportion of the total of all students who studied abroad dropped again during 1995-1996 and now stands at 12 percent (plus another 1 percent for calendar year); only 42 percent of these are identified as juniors. Semester-long programs now account for 39 percent of all activity (another 1 percent were overseas for two quarters). Short-term programs, lasting less than a semester, now represent 48 percent of reported enrollments. Educated guesses suggest that there are many more short-term study tours whose student numbers are not reported to IIE, perhaps because these are initiated and led by faculty rather than by an office of international programs.

This steady growth and diversification comes with questions about the quality of these briefer and more specialized programs and their long-range impact. Is more sometimes less? Are all students having the desired "significant educational experiences abroad?" What is the relationship between duration and ultimate educational impact? Between the amount of time students spend in a country or countries not their own and the learning experience which takes place? In sum, how important is literal time there to the sorts of change, knowledge gain, and conceptual depth we want our students to obtain through their overseas experience? Is the proverbial something always better than nothing? Assuming there are non-temporal factors which can greatly influence student growth overseas, what are they and how can we assure ourselves that they are present in the programs we encourage students to do?

An even broader question is of course how well U.S. colleges and universities are doing with current study abroad programming in preparing American students for the globalized workplace and social environment they will soon enter--especially in comparison to what they now offer the 450,000-plus international students who spend three to five years living and learning on U.S. campuses and earning undergraduate and graduate degrees. In short, are institutions short-changing American students by providing truly world-class training and international education mainly for students from abroad, while keeping even those few students who venture overseas at home for larger and longer portions of their studies (and of course doing even less for the 96 to 98 percent of students who never leave our shores)?

The IIE Open Doors survey provides data on students' field of study--what college records suggest students seem to be majoring in prior to departure (or what they say they are). For the 1995-96 academic year, for instance, 35 percent of students declared themselves (or were classified) as being in social science and humanities, 14 percent in business and management, 11 percent in foreign languages, 7 percent in fine or applied arts, 7 percent in physical sciences, 7 percent in education, 2 percent in engineering, 2 percent in health sciences, 2 percent in math or computer science, 1 percent in agriculture. Five percent were labeled dual majors, and 4 percent undeclared; 8 percent fall into the proverbial "other" category. But little is known about what U.S. students actually study overseas, and no attempts are being made to collect this information.

We don't know, for instance, how many business and management students in Spain actually took courses in business or management, as opposed to Spanish language, history, and culture courses. We don't know, e.g., if math majors are taking mathematics courses or fulfilling other more general requirements. We don't know if education majors take courses in education overseas, or if the intended benefit is simply profit from experiencing new ways of learning. We don't know how many fine or applied arts majors took only courses in the arts and how many elected courses in history or politics. Assuming that students in fact took some course work in their major, does that normally mean one, two or three courses? Does the completed course work normally count for elective credit within the major or satisfy general requirements?

No one can say.

We can make some assumptions, of course.

What We Assume

For instance, we can assume that all courses taken overseas by language and area studies students are probably related to these majors. A student in an Arabic studies program in Morocco or in a Russian language program in Moscow is likely to be taking courses in Arabic and Middle Eastern history, politics, and culture or in Russian language and culture, respectively. But what about a geology major attending the Univ. of Otago, or a chemistry major attending the Univ. of Munich? Is there any pattern whatsoever in their course work?

Gender Imbalance

When so-called "under-represented populations" in education abroad are discussed, attention is usually given to such categorizing topologies as: "minority," "older," "male," "two-year college," "physically-challenged" students, or those majoring in such academic areas as science, technology, or other fields with lock-step curricular requirements. Needless to say, many "non-traditional" students fall into more than one of these groupings. As opportunities for students in these groupings to study abroad are extended, it is assumed that more students will take advantage of them, but only when the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege in America are brought more toward balance--something that is not presently happening.

One steady disproportion that is little discussed is that of male students studying abroad in contrast to the numbers of female students. IIE data shows slow but encouraging progress in many of the other categories noted above, but almost no change in the percentages of male students, which has remained in the 37-38 percent range since such things have been measured. Figures for 1995-96 show 35 percent were men and 65 percent women. Since the number of male undergraduate students, generally speaking, is roughly equal to the number of female students, there must be some reasons for these differences. What are they?

One view commonly put forth is that men have tended to major in those academic areas (science, business, pre-law, etc.) less prominently featured in study abroad programs. Another is that male students have feared that their professional pursuits would be jeopardized if a period of (dilettantish, frivolous) study abroad was seen on their academic record--whereas, the argument went, women students, not pursuing such careers, were freer to "cultivate" themselves through a foreign sojourn. Some suggest that 19- and 20-year-old women are further ahead on the development scale than men; others that they are more adventurous and risk-taking; others that they have less to lose, etc. Given recent expansions of program options across the curriculum, plus the nominal "liberation" of both men and women from such gender politics, none of these explanations would seem to have much credence these days. Yet the imbalance persists.

What then accounts for the fact that more than six out of every ten students studying abroad continue to be women? Since there are bound to be exceptions, institution to institution, program to program, and location to location, what are these exceptions and can we learn anything from them? Are there advising strategies or institutional policies which can make a difference? If so, what are they? More information is needed to understand this phenomenon before it can be addressed.

In sum, in a country such as ours, with an open and free educational market of highly autonomous institutions, there is little chance that there will ever be a true national policy on higher education means or goals. It is even less likely that overseas living and learning as a part of undergraduate degree studies will be approached in the same way by everyone. But for international educators to understand what study abroad has become, and what it might be, requires better data than we have, as well as the willingness to ask hard questions and engage in more vigorous debate than has taken place in the recent past.

BILL HOFFA is an independent consultant in international education.