our
view
Be Careful What
You Wish For!
twelfth in a series;
generating thoughts and
discussion in the
study abroad community
This is the twelfth 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:
– Leadership, Management, & Study Abroad
– 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?
– Numbers
– Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
– Down With America
– Beware the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
We welcome your comments and
requests for additional copies at any time to
[email protected].
Be Careful What You Wish For!
Mom used to always remind us that
we should be careful what we wish for, as wishes
often come true, but not always with the best
results. The present buzz about growth in study
abroad—from the requirement at some schools that
every student have a study abroad experience, to the
broader national goal of sending one million students
abroad—reminds us of that admonition. For those
of us who have labored long and hard to take study
abroad from a “nice-to-have” to a “have-to-have,”
getting support for something that we believe in and
that we know often transforms students is exciting.
It would be great if we had much wider participation in study abroad than we do now—for in spite
of all the success we’re experiencing, study abroad
still reaches a very limited portion of the national
college student body. However, we sometimes wonder whether having our wishes come true would be
worth the price we might have to pay.
Recently, my colleagues and I were at a cocktail
party, and as is often the case at such events, people
you don’t know ask what you do for a living. Here
are two responses we got: “Oh, study abroad—my
son did that last month. His group went to Montreal
and Toronto to visit breweries with their industrial
engineering professor, to look at process engineering.” Somebody else said, “My daughter is getting
her MBA at a Top Ten “B” School (name changed to
protect the innocent) and they just finished a 10-day
trip to Argentina, where they visited with local business leaders.” Faculty-led trips of this type are not
uncommon, and MBA international study trips are
de rigueur at many top business schools. Both parents were very pleased with their children’s study
abroad experiences, which didn’t come cheap. They
were well-organized, well-defined, and well-led.
They appeared to have clear academic goals and
were part of a well-constructed curriculum. The
1
our
view
schools behind these activities were first-rate. But
were these study abroad programs?
Some of us are old enough to remember when the
National Dairy Council, or some similar group,
would come to our primary school class, and we
would take turns at the helm of the butter churn while
the rest of the class sang “churn butter churn.” Our
teachers called this “class enrichment.” It helped
. . .there are many ways to enrich
learning, including an international
trip as part of the experience. But
crossing borders is not synonymous with study abroad.
create the link between what we read or were taught
about agriculture and what we ate at home. It was
great stuff. Today, in a wealthier and more privileged
society, some students fly to Switzerland to have the
“churn butter churn” experience…and unfortunately
call it “study abroad.” The point is simple: there
are many ways to enrich learning, including an
international trip as part of the experience. But crossing borders is not synonymous with study abroad.
Simple exposure to an idea or event, such as how to
make butter, isn’t the same as working the farm and
facing the realities of milking cows and dealing with
other cow-care truths. To put it in culinary terms: the
French might refer to the short-term experience as
a “petit casse-croûte” (a snack), as opposed to the
“menu de dégustation” (a multi-course meal). The
Chinese proverb works well here too: “What you
saw when you were there was like the man who sees
flowers from a galloping horse!”
At CIEE we have long believed that international
travel, class enrichment with an international com-
2
Be Careful What You Wish For!
ponent, and similar types of experiences are essential
parts of the internationalization of education (millions
of students traveled abroad for the first time on Council Travel International Student ID cards and tickets).
In a world in which international understanding and
ability to function in culturally diverse settings are
and will become increasingly important, the more
that this type of activity goes on, the merrier. But
let’s not confuse educational enrichment, abroad or
otherwise, with study abroad. These are horses of
a different color. One is designed for quick exposure—an educational enrichment experience—while
the other is designed for slower movement, immersion in the learning process, and acquisition of
cultural understanding. These simply don’t happen
at high speed.
. . . let’s not confuse educational
enrichment, abroad or otherwise,
with study abroad.
Study abroad has evolved significantly over the last
twenty years, and there are now literally thousands of
study abroad opportunities for high school, college,
and graduate students. We believe that a true study
abroad experience at the undergraduate level should
have the following components.
1. The program structure should be academically
substantive. For each three semester hours of
credit, students should complete 40 to 45 classroom contact hours and an additional 85-90
hours of field work, readings, and involvement
in local community activities. Students should
complete a total of 125 to 135 hours of focused
and reasonably well-structured learning activities. In completely experiential situations, when
all of the learning and instruction occur outside
the traditional classroom, students still need to
3
our
view
complete 125 to 135 hours of serious academic
work. Many schools and providers design and
deliver programs abroad with this degree of
academic rigor—but some don’t.
2. A study abroad experience should ensure engagement with the local community beyond saying
“good morning” to the bus driver. Whether the
activity consists of discussion groups, field visits,
or community-based learning, just visiting a destination as a tourist might, with some academic
content thrown in for good measure, does not a
study abroad program make.
A study abroad experience should
ensure engagement with the local
community beyond saying “good
morning” to the bus driver.
3. The program should contain some level of cultural instruction and learning. To simply visit a
new country and culture without any reflection,
discussion, and/or teasing out of the comparative cultural issues between the host and home
society is not study abroad. In the same way
that watching a pro golfer might help improve
your golf, actually playing while talking with the
pro about what you are doing is what can really
increase your skills. Rather than just watching
what goes on in other parts of the world, it is
engaging in that new culture—and reflecting on
how it is similar and different from your own
culture—that can lead to the cultural learning
and understanding that well-designed study
abroad programs offer, and that our society so
desperately needs.
4. Study abroad need not involve language learning.
When it does, there must be enough time both
4
Be Careful What You Wish For!
in an out of the classroom to reap the benefits
of speaking the language in situ. If one is surrounded by Americans, the challenge of making
real progress in a second language significantly
increases. The linguistic challenges also increase
when students find themselves in cities that have
become inundated with tourists and that rely on
English as their lingua franca. Our own research
supports the learning benefits of foreign language
use in the home culture of the language, but not every such environment provides that opportunity.
5. Quality study abroad experiences require time
to be properly developed and executed. They
also require time to mature and reach their full
academic potential. We need more programs in
Africa, parts of Asia, and the Middle East, not
an agglomeration of students in Western Europe.
Patience in this regard is important. Relaxing
standards, just to get going, is a mistake. If in
our rush to achieve growth, we fulfill our enrollment goals but lose sight of our standards, we’ll
ultimately pay a price. Study abroad is growing at
this point because study abroad works—it meets
goals that are important to students, parents,
faculty, staff, and other stakeholders. The quality envelope is, however, being pushed in ways
that could hurt the collective enterprise. Capacity development is a challenge—not for finding
study abroad places and things to do there—but
in building management and execution skills at
those destinations.
If . . . we fulfill our enrollment goals
but lose sight of our standards,
we’ll ultimately pay a price.
So what do we call those experiences that are now
being called “study abroad,” but which are really
educational enrichment in another country? How
55
our
view
about “international program enrichment activities,”
or even, “off-campus internationalization activities?” Let’s not call them study abroad, and let’s not
equate simply sending more students abroad, on
any sort of experience, with success. This is more
than semantics. The need for study abroad is very
real. The numbers are way too low. Inflating them
to showcase growth achieves nothing. In the same
way that dropping out of U.S. News and World
Report rankings will require courage on the part
. . . let’s not equate simply sending
more students abroad, on any sort
of experience, with success.
of college administrations, slowing down study
abroad numbers by developing quality programs
will be challenging. But the payoff will be real. Once
we understand better where we stand, we’ll be far
more effective in getting where we need to go. Our
wishes can, and with work, will come true. But how
our wishes come true—what kinds of programs we
develop and offer our students—will ultimately be
more important than meeting ever-increasing enrollment targets. As GE used to say, “Process is our most
important product.”
6
[email protected] • www.ciee.org • 1.800.407.8839
CIEE: Council on International Educational Exchange
300 Fore Street
Portland, ME 04101
April 2008
OV12 5K