Numbers
This is the seventh in a series of “food for thought” pieces from CIEE. The themes vary but all deal with study abroad for U.S. undergraduates. We present our ideas not as the only viable ones but rather to stimulate discourse in furtherance of the study abroad enterprise. Previous topics include:
– How Are We Doing?
– Standards
– A CIEE Eye for the Study Abroad Guy...or Girl
– Parents, Pills, & Pandering
– A Research Agenda for Study Abroad
– What’s It All About?
We welcome your comments and requests for additional copies. Contact editor@ciee.org.
In study abroad these days there is a good deal of discussion about the numbers. There is the Lincoln Commission number of 1,000,000 students studying abroad each year. There is the
Open Doors number of 190,000 students studying abroad in the most recently reported year, with almost 300% growth in less than 20 years. There are the thousands of Americans studying in Florence or London and similar destinations, and concern about whether those are good or bad numbers. Colleges and universities are tracking the percentage of their graduating classes with international experiences, approaching 90% and more at some smaller private institutions, and reaching significant levels exceeding 20-25% at many large public institutions. There is also the increasingly large number of faculty-led programs, and the number of students studying a second language continues to grow. You get the idea. There are a lot of numbers out there in study abroad. You would think that as a field we were obsessed with them.
As an organization, we at CIEE like numbers. They focus one’s vision on important matters. They track success. They provide a quick and easy measuring stick for our achievements. They also tell us when our performance is not so good. There is a warmth, certainty, and security in good numbers, growing numbers, numbers that are on target, and increases that are double-digit. Curves on graphs that move upward, especially in the context of growth, usually bring better news than curves that move downward. Numbers help us understand many truths and provide guidance in understanding trends and changes in market conditions.
But as we know from recent business scandals, numbers don’t always tell the truth or the whole story. If they did, Enron would be in business today and World Com would have been a good investment. Numbers can lie or they can deceive, sometimes intentionally and sometimes simply because of the way they are calculated. Sometimes it takes a bit of detective work to get behind the numbers and understand what they really mean. And sometimes, obsession with numbers obscures what’s important.
Given all the focus on numbers in study abroad, we thought it would be useful to examine some of the ideas, assumptions, and values driving this behavior. We pose the following questions:
1. Does every undergraduate student need to study abroad? In a perfect world, should study abroad be part and parcel of what we in the 21st century call an educated person, in much the same way that in earlier centuries Greek, Latin, and the Bible provided an educational foundation?
2. How important is the length of a study abroad experience in terms of learning? Should we be concerned that less than one-third of what is termed “study abroad” is for a semester or longer, and that programs of a year in length are now down to 6% of the total?
3. Is it possible for large numbers of American students congregated in attractive destinations like Florence and London to have meaningful learning experiences? And if so, what is the nature of those experiences versus the larger goals of study abroad?
While we like numbers at CIEE, they are not an end in themselves. They are a measure of outcomes, not an outcome. When actions begin to happen, not because it makes sense for those actions to happen, but because they improve the numbers, we should worry. We are concerned that with the focus on numbers the mission is getting muddled. Today, a good deal of action is focused on increasing study abroad participation. Don’t get us wrong, we love it. It’s good for us and what we do. But in the longer term, intellectually, we would be far happier if the focus were less on “how many,” and more on “why” and the potential payoff. Simply put, we’re for “do good things and the numbers will follow” rather than focusing on numbers.
We believe that more and more students this century will be called upon to work in multi-national, multi-cultural settings. The ability to understand that everyone in the world isn’t like us, that we’re not the only people who do things right, or that disagreement with our values and actions is not inherently wrong or evil are some of the many themes that study abroad can develop and teach. It is not just international business students and those studying humanities who are likely to be involved in work that has a global dimension. Work in sciences, engineering, and many other disciplines is increasingly internationalized. As each of these disciplines examines the relevancy of its curricula to tomorrow’s needs, we believe they will inevitably discover the need to internationalize in a meaningful way.
The latest ABET engineering criteria, which require engineering schools to demonstrate, among other things, that their graduates “understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context,” is an important step in this direction. Study abroad professionals can contribute greatly to helping discipline-specific faculty understand ways to create and provide experiences that are meaningful to today’s students. If the focus were more on this pedagogical orientation, and less on the numerical, we believe we would all be better off. While we appreciate the interest college Presidents and others have in expanding the number of graduates who attend an overseas program, in our view unless this comes from a solid academic and pedagogical platform, which is not the case in some situations, success will be short lived. You can push the numbers up for a while on push alone, but not forever.
In today’s world, and certainly tomorrow’s, it would be hard to think of a solid program, designed for government, political science, business, engineering, or humanities students, that doesn’t include international dimensions, including studying abroad. There are other programs–health and computer sciences, accounting, etc.–where faculty may believe that study abroad is not as high a priority for their undergraduates as time spent acquiring knowledge and skills in other ways. This is not to say that study abroad can’t be done well for students majoring in such disciplines. However, faculty members need to identify what the priorities are–and study abroad advisors need to accept that accounting faculty at their school may not be interested in sending their majors abroad, even though accounting faculty at another school just down the road are. For study abroad offices on most campuses, the demand is so great that they should follow the lead of faculty in urging specific groups of students to go abroad. Focus is the key. We believe attention should be paid not to students in all disciplines, but to those where faculty are interested in study abroad. There are a lot of disciplines out there, a lot of doors to knock on, and it makes more sense for study abroad offices to spend time providing guidance about study abroad options and approaches to those schools and departments that open the door when the study abroad office knocks. There’s no point spending time and effort knocking on doors that don’t want to open–that is, trying to convince faculty who place little value on study abroad.
We also think the emphasis should be shifted back to longer-term programming. In a world in which we’re always looking for the simplest and most efficient way of doing things–to work them into our busy schedules–there is a tendency to equate 12-day and 12-month programs. This is not to denigrate the value of short-term programming. We fully recognize that it has value and that for many, it will be their only opportunity to study abroad. But a lot of short-term programming is driven by the desire to keep the numbers and percentages high, without offering longer programs that are more difficult to do well, more expensive to offer, and often beyond the reach of some students. We need to be fair, but we also need to be realistic. While a semester can polish certain language skills and develop others, linguistic development is far richer on longer programming. Further, virtually any goal one can cite for study abroad–inter-cultural understanding, language facility, management of diversity, and others–can be more fully and systematically developed on a long-term program. Many short-term programs are not study abroad at all, but rather study at home in a foreign setting. We need to sort out which is which and renew the focus for longer term programming.
The numbers are clear; today, significantly less than half of all study abroad students enroll in semester or longer programs. We think that students, the academy, and our society would greatly benefit by working towards a model in which 10% of all students studying abroad spent a year or more abroad, two-thirds spent a semester abroad, and the balance participated on short-term programs. We believe it would be beneficial to change the numbers not so much upward as in terms of mix and depth of experience provided. This approach might in fact create a small reduction in total numbers studying abroad at least for a time. But in the end, it will also increase the learning, skill, and benefits for all concerned. If you manage short-term income in a business enterprise, you don’t always achieve long-term profitability. In study abroad, we’re not immune to these tradeoffs, and rethinking some of the emphasis on total numbers versus total benefit might be a very useful exercise.
There is also a good deal of concern, within and outside the field of study abroad, about enclaves of students in some locations. The reality is that the UK is still the number one destination for students studying abroad. Language, history, and tradition are certainly driving forces here. And we’re not purists or zealots who belittle the value of being in a place like London for a study abroad experience. But let’s be honest. There are too many American students in too many city centers around the world. In these places, and as a result of social norms, integration with the local culture is more limited, language development is harder to achieve, and the benefits of being in a foreign place are diminished. While some of this loss results from raw numbers, some of it also results from programming which fails to address the pedagogical challenges of these environments to assure a positive learning experience. We are pleased to see more and more students going to new and different places. But we should guard against Shanghai becoming Florence and Barcelona becoming London in the world of study abroad. The size of a program and a curriculum designed to reduce exposure to other U.S. students are at the core of addressing these issues.
Yes, the numbers are important, but there is more than numbers which should concern us. There is a real opportunity and need for American college students to be more worldly and educated about the world if they are to function effectively in the coming century. There is a real need for linguistic skills development in our increasingly diverse society, and in a more economically and socially interdependent world. There are many disciplines in which study abroad can play an important role in collegiate education and personal development. However, we should not focus only on the numbers. Let’s focus on the needs of students and let the numbers take care of themselves. Let’s change our emphasis from deeper market penetration to more meaningful student experiences.
One useful way of doing this is by changing some of the numbers we look at when tracking study abroad. Let’s not just track students abroad; let’s track semester hours earned abroad, days enrolled abroad as a percentage of total days in a student’s undergraduate career, and hours spent in study of a foreign language. These and similar measures will give us a greater sense of what’s happening than raw participation numbers. These numbers might not make for effective stump speeches to alumni and prospective parents, as they deal with nuances that are often lost in the larger picture. But raising these issues will surely make a difference for the generation of students to come.