In this global era, more and more universities are venturing abroad, setting up campuses and programs in far-flung lands and touting the international exchange of ideas that will surely follow.
But too often, these overseas branches remain isolated outposts, sharing little with the home institution beyond the brand. Many offer a separate curriculum, taught by a faculty hired specifically for the foreign campuses. Research links may be tenuous, student exchanges minimal. If university leaders are serious about producing globally minded graduates, the separation represents a missed opportunity.
It doesn’t have to be that way. What if colleges used their global presence to create real intellectual circulation? Indeed, models exist that do just that.
Take Webster University. The private institution, started by missionary Roman Catholic sisters in the St. Louis suburbs, set up its first overseas campus back in 1978. Today the university has branches in six countries, in Europe and Asia, and is considering locations in Africa and South America, says its president, Elizabeth Stroble.
Webster is not doctrinaire about how it goes abroad—it operates its own residential campuses in Geneva and in Leiden, the Netherlands, while offering stand-alone academic programs at partner institutions in three Chinese cities—but the university is unambiguous about how it sees itself: as a single, global institution.
“The parts have their own integrity. They meet local needs,” Ms. Stroble says. “But they are part of a whole.
“Webster,” she adds, “is one university, no matter where it is.”
What does that mean in practice? Admissions criteria and graduation requirements are explicitly the same whether a student is studying in London, St. Louis, or Cha-am, Thailand. General-education courses emphasize global perspectives.
The core curriculum is taught in English and accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, a U.S. regional accreditor for the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, although there’s enough flexibility for professors to tailor courses to local needs and learning styles. For example, a course on media and law might incorporate different case studies depending on where it is taught, says Grant Chapman, the university’s associate vice president for academic affairs and director of international programs.
City University of Seattle, which operates in nine countries abroad, including Canada and China, also has a shared curricular model, vetted by a central faculty committee. Kurt Kirstein, dean of the School of Management, says the centralized process has helped make the curriculum more international in its orientation. When the university revamped its M.B.A. a couple of years ago, the effort was led jointly by faculty members in Europe and the United States.
City University is now trying to be even more intentionally international. This fall it began an undergraduate International College. Students begin the program, which will include mandatory language study and an international capstone project, in Seattle before studying abroad on one or more overseas campuses. The university hopes the program, which will have about 500 students when it is fully up and running, will draw about 65 percent of its students from abroad.
Webster has several yearlong graduate programs, in business and international relations, in which students spend nine-week terms on each of five overseas campuses.
But too often, these overseas branches remain isolated outposts, sharing little with the home institution beyond the brand.
But much of Webster’s international mobility is simply baked into its structure. The common curriculum and the assortment of foreign campuses makes it easier for U.S.-based students to study abroad without worrying that they’ll get off track and graduate late. About 20 percent of the undergraduates go overseas, and the university ranks among the top master’s institutions for numbers of students doing long-term study abroad.
The arrangement also encourages faculty and staff mobility. Staff members have the opportunity to spend time working on another campus. And each year, 12 percent to 15 percent of faculty members teach at a Webster location overseas or use it as a base for research.
This summer Kathy Corley taught overseas for the third time, a course on fiction and nonfiction in film that she developed with two colleagues in Vienna. “It’s great to share ideas from all over the world,” she says of the collaboration, which blossomed after one of her fellow professors taught in St. Louis. “There’s really a flow back and forth.”
