Latitudes

College groups are “extremely concerned” about federal guidance’s impact on study abroad

New U.S. Department of Education regulatory guidance on third-party vendors could have a broader chilling effect on international education than previously understood, with the potential to significantly increase oversight of study-abroad providers and universities that deliver American programs overseas, and even to prohibit colleges from working with such foreign partners.

The concerns stem from updated guidance that classifies entities that provide “any percentage” of educational and instructional content as “third-party servicers,” subject to expanded reporting requirements. It also states that colleges may not work with providers on programs eligible for Title IV federal-student aid if those providers are located outside the United States, or if their owner or operator is not an American citizen or permanent resident.

As Latitudes reported last week, another aspect of the Title IV guidance, dealing with compensation-based recruitment, had already set off alarm bells for colleges that have contracts with overseas agencies to recruit international students. With many American colleges working with outside programs or foreign universities to offer residential study-abroad options for their students, the “Dear Colleague” letter, released by the Department of Education last month, has the potential to affect the international activities of a broad swath of institutions.

Although the guidance appears to have been spurred by concerns about lack of oversight of online-program managers, outside companies that help colleges run online programs and recruit students to them, it has injected fresh uncertainty into study abroad, which has only begun to regain its footing after Covid-19 halted nearly all international exchange.

“I’m extremely concerned,” said Melissa A. Torres, president of the Forum on Education Abroad, an association of American and overseas colleges and independent study-abroad programs. She noted that previous interpretations of the regulations have excluded study-abroad providers but that the new guidance contains no such language.

Torres has been hearing from colleges worried about the new reporting burdens the guidance could impose on them, and on their foreign partners, including requirements for compliance audits and the sharing of contracts with the Education Department. Some colleges have approved hundreds of study-abroad programs with dozens of providers, Torres said. Could they all be classified as third-party servicers and subject to increased scrutiny?

Likewise, there are questions about the impact of the guidelines on student-exchange programs with foreign universities. In some cases, local laws require U.S.-based education-abroad organizations to set up foreign entities in order to operate programs in certain countries. And colleges work with small locally run program operators in order to give students opportunities to study in off-the-beaten-path destinations, particularly in Africa and Latin America, Torres said. Could the requirement that third-party providers be American-owned and -based severely curtail, or even end, such relationships?

The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment about the guidance and its potential impact on colleges’ international activities. In an interview with Times Higher Education, a spokesman for the department said it is primarily concerned with “the area of recruitment and activities tied to the administration of federal student-aid funds,” suggesting officials may be less focused on curriculum and instruction.

The department is accepting public comment on the guidance, which will go into effect on September 1.

Although she has more questions than answers, Torres said she planned to hold a webinar to brief colleges and programs. She also has been huddling with representatives of other higher- and international-education groups to figure out next steps.

Colleges continue to worry about the impact of the guidance on international recruitment as well, as third-party agencies have become an increasingly prominent part of American institutions’ efforts to attract foreign students. Although the Dear Colleague letter doesn’t specifically mention international recruiters, there is “widespread concern” that they could be considered third-party servicers, said a person within the higher-education policy community, who spoke on background, as her group is still determining its response. Such partnerships would seemingly be off-limits under the guidance because the agencies are located overseas.

The policy expert said she hoped that the Department of Education would rewrite the guidance following the public-comment period to narrow the focus to the type of third-party relationships it is seeking to review. “It is never great when there is so much ambiguity in regulation.”

Anxiety about the guidance is also spreading to Europe, which typically hosts more than half of Americans who study abroad.

Stephen Robinson is director of Champlain College’s Dublin campus and chair of the European Association of Study Abroad. While the Vermont college owns the Irish study-abroad campus, Robinson, who holds British and Canadian citizenship, runs it. Would he be considered the “operator” under the guidance? A survey he conducted three years ago found that only four in 10 resident directors of European study-abroad programs are U.S. citizens.

“It’s all a mess, and I don’t think that” the Department of Education “has thought this through,” Robinson wrote in an email. “It all makes me assume that either the letter is very poorly worded, or they have no concept of education abroad.”

Gian Franco Borio, an Italian lawyer who advises the European study-abroad group, has been analyzing the guidance and said he hoped the department would amend it. Even short-term programs led by American faculty members often work with outside providers to organize educational field trips or deliver other academic content.

If the guidance is enforced the way it is written, it would be “too protectionist,” Borio said in an email. “The real risk is that all or most study-abroad programs and/or private providers that offer educational services … to students coming from U.S. universities and colleges could become unaccessible.”

They crossed borders, and it changed their thinking about diversity

Amara Payne, a senior at George Washington University, grew up in Nashville, Tenn. But studying abroad in Cali, Colombia, she stumbled into a taste of home: salty, deep-friend corn cakes that could have been her grandmother’s recipe.

It was a reminder, said Payne, of the ways that the African diaspora links seemingly disparate communities. “I can find reflections of my own culture in other places. I thought that was really beautiful.”

Yet Payne, who has one Black parent and one white parent, also had to grapple with the fact that she held distinctly America ideas about diversity and race that could seem foreign to her new friends. “Don’t apply the American idea of diversity to these other countries — because that’s not always what people think of as diversity,” she said. “Your definition of who is Black in an American context and who is not is not going to be applicable in a lot of places. Know yourself, but also know what you’re going into.”

Payne was among several students who joined me at the Association of International Education Administrators conference last month, in Washington, D.C., to discuss how leaving your home country to study overseas can shape students’ thinking about diversity.

Livingstone Imonitie, a master’s student from Nigeria at the University of Maryland at College Park, said he has had to come to terms with how he is seen by Americans. “Back at home when people describe me, they say, that’s Livingstone, he’s a handsome guy,” he said. “But over here, it’s completely different: That’s Livingstone, the Black guy. That’s something I struggle with — why do they identify me by my color?”

Imonitie, who studies road safety, said he was surprised to be the only Black student in his lab and to have few Black professors. That deepened his sense of being an outsider, until he made his first friend, an Iranian student. “He saw me as a brother, and not because of my skin color,” he said.

Kyle Dominic G. Ta-ay, who is from the Philippines, also found himself in the minority when he began his master’s program at American University this past fall. Ta-ay works for American’s international-students office, and he’s seen that cultural adjustment to the United States can be bumpy for many. Colleges could do more to explicitly raise issues of culture and identity during orientation and to encourage students, international and American, to form ties with a more diverse set of classmates, he said. Colleges could “encourage people to seek out connections beyond what they would initially expect.”

Yitong Zhou, who came to George Mason University from China, said studying in the United States hasn’t shaken her identity. Yet she sometimes feels uncomfortable with the language and assumptions of American classmates when it comes to issues of culture and race. “I tend to question myself first. Am I being too sensitive? With the language barrier, sometimes you are not sure you get the right gist of the conversation. What if you understand others wrong?”

But Jaden Montgomery found he relished discomfort after studying abroad at a university in Thessaloniki, Greece, where he was the rare Black person. Other students were interested in his perspective, said Montgomery, who also attends American. Still, it wasn’t always easy to have conversations about diversity and race.

“I believe I was able to both change my perspective on the world and help somebody else learn from my experiences,” he said. “Comfort is nice, but at the end of the day, the only way you can truly grow and truly evolve is if you are in discomfort.”

Academic freedom is in decline worldwide

Academic freedom is declining in countries around the globe, including the United States, according to an update to the international Academic Freedom Index.

Academic freedom is in retreat for countries that are home to more than half the world’s population, the index, a joint project of the V-Dem Institute and Friedrich Alexander University-Erlangen-Nürnberg, in Germany, found. The groups singled out 22 countries and territories, including the United States, China, and India, where universities and scholars have significantly less academic freedom than a decade ago.

Just five countries, representing less than 1 percent of the world’s population, had improvements in academic freedom over the same period.

Around the globe

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has announced the expansion of premium processing and online filing for certain international students applying for or extending Optional Practical Training, the work program for foreign graduates of American colleges.

An University of Connecticut researcher has won a $1.4 million settlement after an arbiter found that the institution wrongly fired her for allegedly failing to disclose ties to China. But the university and the National Institutes of Health stood by the original decision, saying that Li Wang, a physiologist, did not report affiliations with Chinese institutions when applying for federal grants.

A former deputy national security adviser said the United States needs to do more to protect the rights of Chinese students in the United States.

Republican members of Congress have criticized Chinese donations to the University of Pennsylvania, where President Biden was an honorary professor before he ran for president, but its levels of overseas support are similar to other prominent research universities.

The Biden administration asked a Texas judge considering the future of a program that offers legal protections to young undocumented immigrants to limit his ruling to only those states that filed the lawsuit challenging the program.

Legislation in Georgia would allow undocumented students who graduate from state high schools to pay lower tuition rates at public colleges, although they would not qualify for in-state tuition.

The Canadian government is asking universities, among others, for input on potential immigration reforms.

A trade agreement between Britain and the European Union could allow British universities to rejoin major European research programs.

Two top Swiss technological universities are considering limits on international enrollments.

Students at the University of Tehran are protesting the closure of dormitories and a move to online classes, which college officials have said are for budgetary reasons.

Smoking will be banned on all Taiwanese college campuses under a new law.

I talked with The Starting Line, LinkedIn’s newsletter about first-generation college students, about my reporting on first-gen students and study abroad.

And finally …

College students in China have created a device that lets people share their love, no matter the distance. Users can kiss a 3D silicone remote kissing device, which plugs into a cellphone. The temperature, movement, and pressure of the kiss are then transferred, via app, to the user’s partner, who has their own version of the device.

One of the student inventors was inspired by his own long-distance relationship, when his only contact with his girlfriend was through his cellphone.

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.