Latitudes

To be tops in entrepreneurship, Babson College invested in global education

Babson College is a top-ranked institution for business education. It applies that entrepreneurial approach to international engagement.

The Massachusetts college has built a worldwide network of institutions that share pedagogical best practices for entrepreneurship education. It has diversified its education-abroad opportunities to give students a chance not just to study overseas but to consult with international companies on real-world business problems. And it requires all graduate students to have a global-learning experience.

International education isn’t an add-on that’s nice to have, said Amir Reza, the college’s dean of global education. Rather, it’s foundational to Babson’s academic mission. Today’s business leaders — and tomorrow’s — must be able to navigate a complex, interconnected, and global marketplace.

“Our graduates have to be global-ready,” Reza said.

Like many colleges, Babson has enrolled international students and sent out study-abroad groups since its founding a century ago. But in recent years, it’s been more deliberate in its global-education work, grounding its efforts in its core strength of entrepreneurship.

Take its approach to institutional partnerships. In 2018 the college started the Babson Collaborative for Entrepreneurship Education, a consortium that shares classroom strategies and teaching methods, conducts joint research projects, and works to build the entrepreneurship-education ecosystem. There’s also a network for students to gain leadership skills and work with peers around the globe.

The collaborative’s 41 members are in 30 countries and include business schools, liberal-arts colleges, and large universities with entrepreneurship majors. While Babson started the program as a way to meet demand from international partners interested in its model of entrepreneurship education, today it serves more as the “convener and connector,” Reza said. “This has created multilateral relationships that allow institutions to work on projects with each other.”

In 2022 the collaborative won an award for innovation in international education from the Institute of International Education for best strategic partnership.

Similarly, Babson officials have worked to develop more study-abroad programming tied to the college’s academic core. Students can take part in an exchange program with a business school in Toulouse, France, or study capitalism in Malaysia or innovation in Ireland. Through international-consulting courses, they work in small teams to advise foreign companies or start-ups on business strategy, building global networks and improving their cross-cultural communication skills in the process. (Babson also has more traditional culture- and language-focused offerings.)

Students who are really excited about international engagement can become global fellows, taking part in study abroad and on-campus international events, getting grants for overseas research, and earning badges for taking a globally focused curriculum.

Over the past decade, participation in overseas study has increased 200 percent. About 60 percent of Babson undergraduates go abroad.

Lorien Romito, senior director for international education, said it takes more than programming changes to move the needle on study abroad. Her office has also drilled into the data to see what groups of students weren’t taking part in international experiences and developed targeted outreach. For instance, Babson holds special study-abroad information sessions for groups of low-income and first-generation students. The sessions highlight students from similar backgrounds who previously studied abroad. Hearing from peers helps such students “see themselves as global learners,” Romito said. “They feel like it’s possible.”

Babson also received funding from an alumnus to expand access to global experiential learning, which allows the college to give $2,000 need-based grants for study abroad. International-education staff members also work with offices across campus, including financial aid, career services, and academic advising, to build intercultural skills and understanding among staff members. Those “campus champions” both encourage students to gain a global experience and support international students studying on campus, Romito said.

“We’re not a large institution,” Reza said, “but we intend to have a large impact.”

I’m interested in how colleges find innovative solutions to deal with common challenges in international education. In the past, I’ve highlighted programs to send first-generation students and students with disabilities abroad and to raise campus awareness of the challenges foreign students face. Is your institution taking an inventive approach to some aspect of international education? Email me at karin.fischer@chronicle.com.

The latest numbers on global research spending

The United States spends more than any other country on research, but it lags behind Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan in research intensity — that is, its spending on research and development as a share of gross domestic product.

That’s one finding of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual report on global research and innovation.

Plus, the number of international students studying science and engineering at American colleges has exceeded pre-pandemic levels. But can the United States hold onto global talent?

Group sounds alarm about Indian student deaths

An organization for Indian expatriates is calling on colleges, student groups, and the U.S. government to respond to a spike in deaths among Indian and Indian American students.

The group, Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies, said it was issuing its call to action after the deaths of about 10 Indian students studying on American campuses in recent months. Nothing links the deaths, which happened in different parts of the country and appear to have varying causes — some of the students died in accidents, others committed suicide, and a few deaths are being investigated as suspicious.

Still, the spate of deaths has unnerved Indian students in the United States as well as their families in India, where the fatalities have been widely covered.

In a statement, Khanderao Kand, the foundation’s chief of policies and strategy, called the deaths “concerning and, if not addressed, would impact their [students’] confidence in the safety in of U.S. universities, potentially impacting the inflow of students further.”

The group said colleges could enhance safety education, provide more accessible and culturally sensitive mental-health support, and crack down on fraternities. It also called for greater coordination between law-enforcement agencies on the local and federal level and between the U.S. government and foreign consulates, including making more resources available for victims of hate crimes.

India is the top source of international students on American campuses.

Around the globe

A senior FBI official told a Chinese American civic organization that the agency did not intend for the China Initiative, the federal investigation of academic and economic espionage, to have a “negative impact” on Asian American researchers.

Protesters disrupted a speech at Harvard University by Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the United States, denouncing the Chinese government’s policies on Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

Sponsors of international educational and cultural exchange programs will be able to sign certain forms digitally and transmit them electronically, under new U.S. Department of State regulations.

Washington University in St. Louis will pay a civil penalty and back pay to an employee of its medical school who said he had been discriminated against because of citizenship status and then retaliated against for complaining about the discrimination, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a settlement announcement.

Legislation proposed in Alberta, Canada, would permit the provincial government to veto agreements that colleges, cities, and other local groups have with the national government if they contradict provincial objectives. Higher-education organizations warn that the bill, which could affect federal research, could compromise academic freedom.

The British government has rejected a European Union proposal that would have made it easier for young people ages 18 to 30 to study and work abroad in the wake of Brexit. Officials said they were open to negotiating mobility deals with individual E.U. member countries but not one that would be Europe-wide. The proposal would also have reversed higher tuition fees for European students at British colleges.

A high-profile report urges the European Union to guarantee the free movement of research, innovation, and education across the region, but critics fear it could lead to top-down regulation of science.

The U.S. National Academies have started a fund for Ukrainian scientists that will pay for fellowships, training on how to commercialize research, and workshops on critical issues for Ukraine’s recovery.

Colleges will be able to open international branch campuses in Greece after legislation won parliamentary approval.

A British university is denying claims that its cloud-seeding techniques caused severe flooding in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Nigerian security forces rescued 22 college students and staff members who were abducted and held by terrorists for 207 days.

Hong Kong’s education secretary has cleared Xiang Zhang, vice chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, of misconduct charges.

Iowa State, Loyola Marymount, and Northern Arizona Universities and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are among the winners of this year’s Heiskell Awards, given for innovation in international education.

And finally …

South Korea, which faces a demographic cliff of its own, has an answer to shrinking student enrollments: senior citizens.

Some South Korean colleges are creating retirement communities on their partly empty campuses as a way to bring in new revenue. Older people pay for housing, and the institutions offer special classes and health care. They will also hold programs to bring seniors and students together, Korea JoongAng Daily reports.

Thanks for reading. I 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 X or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.