Hi Everyone! My name is Christie Graziano and I will be graduating from the MSEd program at Baruch in May, with one elective left to take this summer. I have worked at CUNY John Jay College for the past 3 years as Coordinator for the Office of Student Transition Programs, which handles new student orientation, weeks of welcome, parent and family programs, commencement and senior related activities, as well as a peer ambassador leadership program. I graduated with a B.A. in Communications and Marketing from Loyola University Maryland in 2009. During my junior year, I studied abroad in Amsterdam, Netherlands and this experience forever changed my life! I caught the travel bug and after working for a year in media buying, I applied for a working holiday visa in Australia and spent the year working and traveling Australia and parts of Southeast Asia. This experience as well as my experiences working as a work-study student is what prompted my interest in working in Higher Education and I hope to move into the field of international education after I have completed my master’s degree.

All three articles, in various different ways, focused on the important concept of Internationalization. Internationalization in the context of higher education is “the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of postsecondary education.” This concept is something that I have heard discussed in many meetings on my campus, as well as in my colleges 5-year strategic plan. In addition, I notice it is a growing topic of higher education articles and has been discussed in my various classes at Baruch. Altbach’s article emphasized the importance of reflecting on our world history and examining how we have succeeded and more importantly failed at this concept in the past due to governmental influences and nationalism, which trumped any efforts of significant international higher education partnerships that would build connections and create peace internationally. A perfect example of this was during World War II, after significant efforts towards internationalization had been made post World War I, yet the nationalism efforts that created Nazi Germany were widely supported by German universities. What sparked my interest the most about this article was the question as to whether current global conflicts will influence or harm the progress we have made since the 1980s to foster these relationships and make large strides in international education? I do feel that the conflicts happening in the world will and have already influenced internationalization as a whole and continued collaboration between certain countries is made impossible due to internal and external conflicts.

Green’s article focused more on the who is leading the way in the internationalization of higher education and the United States is not among one of these leaders. This article did not surprise me at all, as I have felt we were way behind when compared with other countries since I studied abroad in 2008. Students I had studied with all spoke more than one language, studying in another country seemed to be a natural part of their postsecondary education experience, and the diversity of students from various countries at the university I attended was in stark contrast to my campus at home. What I did find interesting was that the US had the highest percentage (15%) of institutions that had no internationalization strategy when compared to all responding institutions, which had 7.5% with no strategy in place. I think one point that I notice in most of my observations about recruiting more international students for US institutions is the financial benefit because international students are not eligible for financial aid; therefore, they pay full sticker price for tuition, which increases revenue for institutions. While this is a great benefit, I do not feel this is the reason for searching to internationalize ones campus. This makes me wonder if that is one of the reasons the U.S. lags behind other nations in regards to their internationalization strategy. Oxford’s article points out that “the presence of international students is not a core part of the student body for the world’s leading universities” (p. 5). I think this is a piece that the majority of U.S. institutions are missing. However, according to this article, it contradicts Green’s article by saying that the United States is still the most popular country for international students, while Green points out that only Latin America and the Caribbean rank North America as their top regional priority. Oxford does point out however, that US and UK markets are declining as other countries become more popular for international study.