US-CHINA: Global engagement and study abroad

In his town hall meeting for future Chinese leaders in Shanghai last month, President Barack Obama announced a goal of 100,000 US students studying abroad in China. This is a significant increase on the 13,000 young Americans who did their "study abroad" stint in China in 2007-08.

These 13,000 students represented just 5% of the 260,000 study abroad students for that year. And they were 2,000 more than the students studying abroad the year before. This was a 19% increase - the third largest increase for destinations - India and Australia both grew a little more but the base numbers were under 3,000.

In 2007-08 academic year, China was the fifth largest destination for study abroad- coming between France (17,000) and Australia (11,000). China was well behind the United Kingdom's 33,000 and Italy's 30,000.

Obama did not give any idea of what sorts of programmes he hoped these future American leaders would follow. Nor does it probably matter if the goal is greater strategic engagement and leadership in all fields.

Nor does it matter if the benefits of mutual understanding are independent of academic discipline. But some language skills would be desirable as far as longer term benefit and immediate success in academic pursuits are concerned.

The President did not set a date for attaining the goal. A constant annual growth of 20% for the next 10 years would produce around 80,000. This is twice the overall growth rate of 10% that has held for recent years. Attaining that growth rate or improving on it will require federal action and fiscal support because the current 20 or so privately-financed programmes are unable to underwrite numbers of this scale.

Fortunately, the US Congress has the Simon Bill before it again. The bill, which foundered in the last months of the George W Bush presidency, includes a 10-year goal of one million students studying abroad per year. This is a fourfold increase over the 260,000 last year - and a small but real stretch up from the 650,000 who would study abroad if the growth of recent years continued independent of the recession.

The bill proposes a foundation which would use federal and private funds for grants to individuals, higher education institutions and third parties controlled by higher education institutions for study abroad scholarships and some related purposes. It will restrict these awards to credit bearing activities and will encourage diversification in both destinations and in participation.

There are many ways to question the significance and value of study abroad. But criticisms based on history and prejudices overlook some large public policy interests.

Instead, there are diplomatic, economic and strategic dimensions to the case for more young people to study abroad. For nearly a decade the US engaged in a version of isolationism that cost numerous opportunities and friendships because of a lack of understanding of the languages, faith and culture of others. This is being replaced by a foreign policy of "broader engagement" based on principles of respect, "mutual interest" and the dignity of all.

One of the building blocks of that policy is education, be it scholarships, exchanges or immersion in the languages and culture of others. These are ingredients of Joe Nye's "soft power": power that achieves desired ends by attracting others to a particular set of values or behaviours.

In simple economic terms, study abroad has been touted as a pathway to competiveness since at least the early 1980s. Language skills and the capability to work in diverse teams and across cultures have been celebrated as skills or competencies for a globalised world.

Others, such as the NAFSA: the Association of International Educators, point out that 20% of US jobs depend on international trade and that trade depends, in some measure, on cultural understanding.

Then there is the strategic interest. It is helpful to know the values, mores and aspirations of allies and enemies alike. These are embedded in the language, history and institutions of nations and peoples.

Interacting with people, participating in their rituals, appreciating their art, food and folklore deepens an individual's appreciation of those values and strengthens an understanding of how they shape behaviour and national policies. Direct experience with people and institutions of other lands is more likely to lead to language proficiency and greater cultural awareness than staying at home in a monoglot society.

In short, there are some compelling political and economic reasons for supporting study abroad programmes as part of the education of young Americans. Just as historically there were compelling imperial reasons for Alexander the Great to study at the University of Takshasila and commercial advantage for traders to learn the customs and languages of the Silk route market towns, today's business and diplomatic strategists gain a comparative advantage by knowing the culture and languages of others.

These factors shape national interests and drive public policy. But there are also institutional drivers that shape individual college's interests in the international experiences of students. Universities and colleges are oft conceived as ways of transmitting knowledge between people regardless of the social borders of class and birth. The research universities were designed to create knowledge that would solve the problems besetting people regardless of nationality. They pursued this mission through the old trinity of research, teaching and service.

Modern global institutions have reworked this formula to eschew domestic boundaries. Researchers pursue knowledge across geographies, cultures and languages because disease and famine know no physical or linguistic limits.

Scholars teach students from many nations who are bound for working lives in more than one location and in culturally pluralist teams and organisations. Faculty and students serve communities in many different locations - be it New Orleans or Botswana - and different disciplines - be it housing or public health. These refinements revitalise Study Abroad and broaden its relevance.

It is no longer a faint echo of the Grand Tour of European capitals designed to inculcate caste marks and social graces like dancing, music and drawing. Rather it celebrates knowledge gained through direct experience, through immersions in culture and language, through engagement with others and by confronting differences.

Just as it helped 17th Century Englishmen acquire a sense of how to act in various social circumstances, it helps scholars and students engage and shape a world where people, ideas, knowledge and capital move quickly and freely across national borders.

We are at a time when institutional aspirations and national imperatives align around the goal of preparing young leaders for a 'smaller' world of closely connected people, economies and cultures. A key part of that preparation is knowledge of and engagement with "others". The modest goal of one million studying abroad needs support - political and intellectual.

The political support is best offered through 'voice' - a voice that melds the many tongues, the Babel of advocates for Study Abroad, into a plausible and credible message. "Young American leaders need to be prepared to be global citizens able to walk and work and talk with all."

The intellectual support should come through research and analysis that will make the goal of a four-fold increase in students abroad an easy reach and one which is reached through high quality programmes.

'Good' study abroad programmes offer experiences that are integrated with course work, are academically rigorous and challenging and are supported by faculty, and are subject to some form of institutional quality assurance and risk assessment.

Ideally, the opportunities are open to students from all disciplines and are offered regardless of race, gender, disability or sexuality. Much of this knowledge is grounded in 80 or more years of institutional experience and is codified and disseminated by the industry and has been done so for 25 years or more.

Public and private incentives can influence the behaviour and choices of students. Reducing the costs to an institution or to the individual can increase the supply of opportunities and diversify destinations and fields of study.

Financial support can also influence the length of time students are abroad and extend the range of activities to include internships and service work as well as formal study and language and culture immersion. Money increases and diversifies supply.

One gap in knowledge is what shapes student demand. Another knowledge gap is our lack of understanding of the decision process - what motivates a student to consider study abroad, to construct a menu of options and choose between those options? And we have only a rudimentary knowledge about how to construct and administer credit recognition policies across institutions.

We know even less about what to assess and how to assess student learning from Study Abroad activities. There are at least four different instruments that seek to gauge personal growth and development attributed to study abroad. While qualities such as adaptability, tolerance, and self-reliance are admirable, they are not the exclusive domain of study abroad and can be fostered by a wide range of activities.

We need to specify education outcomes from study abroad that are more closely tied to the learning objectives of disciplines or fields of inquiry. Once we define and validate those we can begin the task of creating assessment tools.

Finally, there is a need for some practice oriented research and analysis. If the one million a year study abroad students are to be offered and enjoy academically rewarding opportunities existing programmes will need to expand and new ones be created.

What are the institutional impediments to growth and how can they be addressed? How do we maximize the impact of incentives for faculty participation and align student and faculty involvement with an institution's mission and academic traditions? What lessons can we learn from exemplars of good practice?

To maximise the impact of those 100,000 students and the 900,000 others studying elsewhere, we need to know a lot more about how excellent programmes operate and to make that knowledge readily available.

* Alan Ruby focuses on globalisation's effects on universities and education around the world at the University of Pennsylvania. He has held senior posts in state, national and international organisations and has been a policy adviser, strategic planner and change agent in many government and non government settings, including the Atlantic Philanthropies, one of the world's largest, where he designed the due diligence framework.