Latitudes

Readers on how they’ve tackled study abroad’s access problem

Have underrepresented students speak directly to their peers about their experience studying abroad. Embed opportunities for overseas study in programs for first-generation students and students of color. Remove the barriers, real and perceived, that make students think going abroad isn’t for them.

Back in the fall, I wrote about education abroad’s first-gen problem and how one Pennsylvania institution, Franklin & Marshall College, was working to get more students who were the first in their families to go to college to have an international experience. How are other colleges trying to move the dial? I asked. Readers responded, and I want to share some of those promising strategies to reach students from populations missing from study abroad:

Students have credibility with their classmates, said Stephanie Tignor, director of global learning at Virginia Commonwealth University. The university’s Black and Abroad program connects returning study-abroad students of color with peers who are thinking of doing an academic program overseas.

The annual event, co-sponsored by the global-education and multicultural-affairs offices, gives students the opportunity to speak candidly about their experiences, including issues of funding, preparation, and race and racism abroad. Those first-hand perspectives are valuable, Tignor said. While her team works hard to advise students, as a staff of white women, their viewpoints may not resonate as personally with students from underrepresented backgrounds.

“It gets people excited when they see, here’s someone like me and they actually did it,” Tignor said.

Sending a diverse group of students abroad is a priority at Virginia Commonwealth, a minority-serving institution. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, 18 percent of students participating in its study-abroad programs were Black, 14 percent were Asian, and 6 percent were multiracial. Those participation rates are higher than the national rates for those populations — and importantly, they are reflective of the university’s student body.

As at other institutions, the pandemic grounded study abroad at Virginia Commonwealth, but it also opened new doors: The university teamed up with several other Virginia colleges to host a series of virtual Black and Abroad conversations.

Tignor’s office is working to expand the model, which won a national award for diversity in study abroad. This fall, it held its first LGBTQIA + Abroad event and is considering similar programming for Latino and first-generation students, she said.

Virginia Commonwealth is also tackling some of the practical hurdles that prevent students from studying abroad, especially those related to finances. It offers some vouchers to help defer costs and organized a universitywide points-sharing system that allows airline miles from employee travel to be used to purchase plane tickets for low-income students.

A focus on ‘world English’ and emphasizing a destination’s diversity

Like many colleges, West Virginia University has long encouraged students to study in a linguistically diverse set of countries. But in recent years, there has been a decline in foreign-language study among the university’s students. And for first-generation students, language was an especially big roadblock — in a campus survey, 90 percent of students said they would not go to a non-English-speaking country, said Vanessa Crandall Yerkovich, director of education abroad.

Worried that students wouldn’t go abroad — as a state, West Virginia ranks 47th in the share of its college population that studies overseas — Yerkovich and her colleagues are trying a new approach focused on “world English,” the differences in dialect, accent, and vocabulary in English spoken around the globe.

Through a grant from World Learning, an international education and exchange nonprofit, West Virginia is starting a pilot project that will send underserved students on short-term programs to two English-speaking destinations, Jamaica and Wales. The first groups will travel over spring break this year.

Rather than a stand-alone trip, the international component is embedded in a first-year seminar for students from traditionally underrepresented and underserved backgrounds. Intercultural learning and other preparation for the trip is integrated into the curriculum, and students will travel with a professor, teaching assistant, and classmates who they know. Yerkovich hopes the familiar faces will help make international travel seem less intimidating.

“For some of these students, just going to Morgantown was a big deal,” she said of attending the flagship university. “So to get a passport and get on a plane is huge.”

Cost, along with language, was another big hurdle, and West Virginia is waiving tuition for the overseas program and seeking scholarships to cover students’ travel expenses.

To create the program, Yerkovich had many allies across campus, including the Office of Student Success and the department of world languages, literatures, and linguistics. She hopes that additional voices will reinforce the value of going abroad and that by blending the experience into a first-year course, students will see international education as essential to their studies.

While colleges are pushing to send a more diverse group of students overseas, Education New Zealand is working to attract underrepresented students as a study-abroad destination.

“How do we change the narrative away from just hobbits and beautiful scenery?” said DuBois Jennings, director of engagement for North America at the New Zealand government agency that promotes international education. He and his colleagues think New Zealand’s distinctive Maori culture could appeal to students from marginalized backgrounds and those looking to study issues of diversity and indigenous rights. (The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand.)

As part of its focus on access and inclusion in study abroad, Education New Zealand has formed partnerships with the U.S. Department of State and the National Science Foundation to create opportunities for research and study abroad in New Zealand for American students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Exchange agreements could also lead to more options for Maori students to study in the United States or engage in international scientific research projects.

Traditional study-abroad programs, with their emphasis on sending individual students around the globe, may not be a natural fit for students from communally minded cultures like the Maori, Jennings said. “Study abroad is not built for indigenous people in the way it operates.”

Education New Zealand’s efforts were disrupted by the pandemic, when strict travel rules meant that few international students could enter the country. But the group organized some virtual programming, such as an event that brought together students of color at the University of Maryland at College Park and Maori students from the Auckland University of Technology to discuss politics, culture, and racism.

“Yes, we still have the hobbit stuff, we still have all the beautiful scenery,” Jennings said. “But we also offer a different, more multicultural picture.”

What the research tells us about access and study abroad

The answer is not simply more money to send students abroad, said Melissa Whatley, one of the authors of the paper, “From Exclusive to Inclusive,” with Amy E. Stich, an associate professor higher education at the University of Georgia.

“Yes, finances can be a hurdle, but I think it can be an easy excuse,” said Whatley, who is now an assistant professor of international and global education at the School for International Training Graduate Institute. “A scholarship alone isn’t going to solve problems of access and inclusion. Students need to be able to see themselves participating in study abroad.”

When the researchers examined colleges with higher-than-expected study-abroad participation rates, they found that the colleges tended to have a few things in common. For one, they provided students with a large amount of information on education abroad and typically did so often and early in students’ college careers. That matters, especially for students who don’t come from families where study abroad, or even international travel, is expected, Whatley said. “Students can’t plan for what they don’t know.”

In addition, many of the high-performing institutions did specific outreach to students from underrepresented groups and to their parents. Those colleges also made international study part of their institutional cultures, emphasizing the value of the experience for all students. Inclusive language sends an important message, Whatley said.

And the high-performing institutions had more-inclusive policies for study abroad. By contrast, the colleges with lower participation rates tended to place restrictions on who could go abroad, such as limiting programs to upperclassmen or students who met certain academic qualifications, and impeding students’ ability to use financial aid while overseas.

Around the globe

A Chinese-owned for-profit college in Massachusetts will lose its accreditation this summer amid allegations of fraud and financial mismanagement. Officials at Bay State College said they plan to appeal the New England Commission of Higher Education’s decision.

An Indiana University student who was stabbed repeatedly while riding a bus was allegedly attacked because she is Asian.

The University of Pittsburgh plans to close its English-language institute, one of the oldest in the country, because of enrollment declines.

The Canadian province of New Brunswick has started a million-dollar program to try to retain international students after graduation due to labor shortages.

McGill University’s student-government association is calling for it to divest its endowment funds from companies with ties to the Chinese government’s human-rights violations against its Uyghur Muslim minority, the first such vote at a Canadian institution. Several student groups at American colleges have passed similar resolutions.

One more reason for concern about long-term enrollment trends from China: For the first time in six decades, the country’s population is declining.

The Chinese government reversed its zero-Covid policy, but will that bring an end to protests, at home and abroad? Axios spoke with overseas protest leaders, several of whom are international students.

South Africa will form a national commission to work with the country’s higher-education institutions on safety and security after an apparent assassination attempt on a top university leader.

Qatar plans to approve four new international branch campuses to operate in the country, including one from the United States.

Hungary’s government said it would loosen political controls on the country’s universities after Hungarian institutions were largely shut out of a European academic-exchange program.

And finally …

For years, American colleges have debated the use of paying outside agents to recruit students overseas. But with colleges facing a volatile international-enrollment environment, the use of such agents has become a more important strategy, according to a recent survey by the Institute of International Education. Agents’ knowledge of a national market and local customs can be key to connecting with students and their families. Yet concerns linger. Some international educators continue to object to how agents are paid, which is often on a per-student commission basis. Others say that agents can be helpful but emphasize that proper vetting is crucial.

Join The Chronicle on Wednesday, January 25, at 2 p.m. ET for a virtual forum on international-student recruitment agents. I’ll lead a panel of experts in discussing the pros and cons of agents, as well as providing practical advice on how institutions that are relatively new to agents should use them for the best outcomes.

The webinar is free, but registration is required. You can sign up here.

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line, at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.