Posted on by m.fernandez · 1 Comment

W-4 Melissa Fernandez

In contrast to last weeks reading this weeks reading is about internationalizing U.S. higher education. I found it interesting that our discussion about incentives to ensure students go back to their home country was a hot topic last week but the U.S. does not really push those ideas. Instead programs like extending optional practical training to students who come study abroad here to 29 months instead of 12. For example, the David L. Boren scholarship and fellowship only require U.S. students to work for 1 year or the U.S. government. With the hefty monetary amount that they are given as well, more years should be required.

Another program that was really surprising and I did not know about was the 2013 U.S. Mexico Bilateral Forum on Higher Education, Innovation and Research. Currently we are fighting a huge battle political about making our borders stronger but opening up a program like this could make or break those policies. These agreements were made with President Obama and the Mexican president where they plan on sending over 100,000 Mexican students by 2018 and 50,000 U.S. students to Mexico. I can see this policy being broken when a new presidential candidate is elected. Right now millions of people are fleeing Mexico due to unsafe conditions, why would we want to send our students into that kind of predicament. Can the Mexican government ensure our students safety? In an article I read it states that the Mexican government does need to try harder than the Americans convince students to study abroad in their country.

https://usmex.ucsd.edu/_files/MMF2014_Reading_Factsheet-FOBESII.pdf

There have also been many goals set in place by the U.S. government without any actual plan on how to achieve these goals. The reading mentions that there are several reasons why there is not a comprehensive national policy for the internationalization of higher education in the U.S. but the largest is that we have no central ministry of education. Since I work with international admissions at CUNY I see that many other countries have centralized ministries of education. I never understood why students could not receive transcripts directly from their university as many of them insisted they had to reach out to the ministry of education. As much as this may be difficult at times it centralizes the higher education system. If the U.S. had something similar to this we may not have to worry about non accredited institutions giving students degrees that are not accepted in the work place or by other accredited institutions.

Posted on by A. Olly

W4: Decentralization, Mexico, and Funding

This weeks ACE reading on internationalization in the US discussed a variety of initiatives taking place. Some topics that stood out to me include decentralized policymaking, a US-Mexico exchange program and funding issues.

A striking detail was the chart on page 11 showing the numerous players involved in the creation/ implementation/ regulation of higher education internationalization policies and programs. This setup seems to be the result of the US being one of the few countries without a Ministry of Education. Two of the five players involved (Federal and State governments) have systems in which their leaders serve between 4-8 years. Does the potential of differing visions between a leader and their successor affect the ability to implement long term changes to the approach of internationalization?

I was interested in the US-Mexico higher ed exchange program (FOBESII) started in 2013 by President Obama and President Peña Nieto of Mexico, in part due to the contrast between this agreement and the anti Mexican sentiments voiced on the campaign trail.  Would the election of a particular candidate lead to the dissolution of this program? We should cross our fingers that FOBESII remains intact, as it has made some notable achievements in 2014, including: The travel of almost 27, 000 Mexican students and instructors to the US, doubling pre FOBESII numbers. 23 new educational agreements between the US and Mexico, resulting from visits of US university presidents. The groundbreaking of a US public university (Arkansas State U), and a US research center (Colorado State U) in Mexico.  Will our 45th president see the value in exchange agreements like FOBESII or find such relations with our southern neighbor problematic?

Funding is a vital topic when discussing internationalization, and it can be argued that it should be the first topic discussed. The charts on pgs 37-38 illustrate how far behind US funding is with the internationalization efforts of other countries such as Saudi Arabia, with our total funding amounts to less than the funding for individual programs elsewhere. However, it will be interesting to see if the current low oil prices affect funding for international education programs. Also notable is the difference between American and Canadian government funding for institutional internationalization programs. The most significant fact from the ACE funding section was that US federal internationalization programs often do not provide federal funding. Among the multiple outside sources they use to fund their programs are foreign governments. ACE notes that this setup is unbalanced and puts our relationships with these governments at risk. However, in spite of the arguments that can be made in favor of increased funding for internationalization initiatives in the US, this seems unlikely seeing that federal and state funding for higher education continuously faces cuts.

Allison Olly

FOBESII resource: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/01/235641.htm

Posted on by Victoria Tsang

W4 – Comprehensive National Policy of Internationalization of US Higher Education

For this week’s reading, this issue of whether or not there should be a comprehensive national policy on internationalization in the United States was examined. Given the structure of the U.S. government and our higher education system, a national policy might not be as effective as in other countries. As mentioned in the reading, the diversity of different types of higher education institutions in the United States makes it difficult to have a national policy that would be general enough to cover all the different institutions but specific enough to to actually be effective. I agree that there should be more collaboration and more effort put into working together with the various governmental agencies and non-governmental agencies to ensure sufficient funding of the various programs that attempt to better the internationalization of the United States higher education system.

Hans de Wit mentioned at the Association of International Education Administrators conference that funding is one of the frequently mentioned challenges of internationalization of higher education. This has caused institutions to view international students as “cash cows”, because more international students means more revenue. The reading also mentions how institutions justify the increase of international students can help balance out the limited number of domestic students that are able to go abroad by bringing the diversity and culture to the home campus. But as the reading also mentions, there seems to be a lack of support for the international students to properly infused their diverse backgrounds into the local culture and benefit the local students. The benefits of the diversity from having international students do not magically manifest themselves without the support from the institution. Institutions need to provide adequate support both for the international students and their own students and faculty to be able to take advantage of the benefits of a diverse community.

De Wit goes on to mention how mobility has been at the forefront of internationalization. Global competitiveness is increasing and causing tension between quantity and quality as more students and scholars go abroad. But there is little focus on the vast majority of students that do not go abroad in the United States. To improve internationalization at the home campus, curriculum and programs can be globalized to increase exposure of all the students to different cultures and languages to allow them to be more globally competent. In the article, de Wit also mentions how there is missing a “more comprehensive approach to internationalization and a focus on internationalization of the curriculum and learning outcomes to enhance the quality of education and research”. Especially when the majority of U.S. college students do not study abroad or research abroad, there needs to be more efforts to globalize the environment at home in order to make all the students more globally competent and open to learning about other cultures.

Posted on by m.parsowith

W4, Blog 4: Melissa Parsowith (Article Response)

This week’s reading highlights the current policies and future directions of internationalization in higher education. It outlines prominent policy actors and discusses current policies (using the 4 typology subcategories previously discussed: student mobility, scholar mobility & research collaboration, cross-border education, and IaH.) The reading begins by defining key policy players in the United States, such as the U.S Department of State, Education, Defense, as well as the National Science Foundation. Together, these agencies (and others) can be analyzed using the 4 typologies listed above to help develop comparisons on a global scale. In the Executive Summary, it is highlighted that while the U.S does many things well, what we lack as a nation is a comprehensive national policy which links multiple initiatives together in order to further promote the internationalization of higher education in our country. The reading suggests that in order to address this issue, the U.S must promote higher levels of engagement between the world of Higher Education and these agencies. It also suggests that we coordinate more well-funded initiatives which support global internationalization.

Something that I found very interesting was the nod towards the United States’ decentralized structure of government. Because of this, as well as the current state of Higher Education in our country, the author states that they do not foresee one national policy proving to be effective on a global scale. Instead, they believe that the U.S would need to target federal policies and programs individually, in order to best support the internationalization effort as a whole. I agree with this train of thought and also find it very interesting to see how different our country is from others discussed later on in the article. Speaking from personal experience, I have traveled abroad to many Caribbean countries where I have been lucky enough to tour their Ministry of Education building. The United States is so different because we lack an educational structure defined by a single governing agency. In an article titled, “The Three Great Strengths of U.S Higher Education,” the author explains “This is the defining feature of U.S. higher education. It is why we have the best universities in the world (by pretty much any measure), and it is also why applying to U.S. colleges and universities can be so confusing. We do have a Department of Education, but it is by far the smallest federal department. It doesn’t run schools or universities. It doesn’t issue diplomas. It doesn’t write or choose curricula. So each college or university decides for itself how best to teach its students. This leads to the first great strength of U.S. higher education—diversity” (Gorski, p.1).

It is an undeniable fact that while the U.S has work to do regarding Internationalization at Home, among pursuing other global policy initiatives, we have already succeeded in promoting a vastly diverse realm of education for our citizens as well as visiting scholars. As the article concludes, I agree that it will be of the utmost importance to support policies which promote “preparedness for a global era” because that is absolutely the direction which our world is headed.

 

Reference: http://www.internationalstudentguidetotheusa.com/articles/three-great-strengths-of-us-higher-education.htm

Posted on by a.ilazarova

W4- More Federal Funding

The American Council on Education discusses current initiatives and policies to promote internationalization at the higher education level. The article discusses four key aspects including student mobility, scholar mobility, cross-border education and internationalization at home. It appears that funding for higher education in the U.S is a top issue to keep any program afloat. The major agencies that are involved funding internationalizing U.S higher education include the federal government, state government, accrediting agencies and higher education institutions.

The White house and the state department initiated a few programs that will assist with student mobility from other countries, yet this has not really proven to be much of success because there is no federal funding to sustain these programs.

On multiple occasions, the article addresses how federal funding, as well as a general contribution to internationalization, is something that is vastly important to internationalization policies in U.S.  Majority of the funding for higher education, of course, comes at a state level, which is not substantial towards meeting the goals that other countries have achieved. Non-governmental agencies, accrediting agencies and institutions themselves  all continue to help fund policies as well but at a much lower rate then desired to sustain certain policies as well as  kick start any new ones .

However, what federal government is wholeheartedly supporting is the mobility of scholars and research collaboration policies. That is due to the internal interest that the federal government has to be more competitive in the global market. This is only showing true for mainly America. Canada, for example, received about 60 percent of international funding from the federal government for the past couple of years.

Cross-Border education as mentioned in international ACE report is also is a low priority to receive and or maintain federal regulation or funding.

Internationalization at home is focused mainly at the institutional level. Development and foreign language programs are not funded regularly, causing more program cuts. Furthermore, the U.S government does not have a specific target for a number of outbound mobility.Overall there seems to be a lack of broadly inclusive policies and a goals that the US is looking to further international education .

However, according to U.S Department of education federal government only contributes a small amount of funds towards education . The Policy-making mainly comes at a state level. According to recent news  Obama has been looking to promote more involvement of federal government in higher education sphere, however, with more funding from the Federal government there would also be more strict regulation. Hence, the problems raised by the ACE report might not be solved as swiftly, if federal involvement comes with the funds that they are needing to keep internationalization thriving in the U.S.