This week’s portion of the ACE Report touched on a topic that has been the “hot button” topic in higher education in recent years and how it is certainly relevant to the success of international higher education programs around the world. This topic is assessment: how do countries or institutions show that international higher education programs and policies are actually achieving the outcomes and objectives they claim to achieve. Organizations such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recent made it clear that assessing learning and outcomes should be a global effort. As higher education expands beyond national boarders, it is important to identify what we want students to get from studying or living abroad and what quality of education they are receiving. As the director for education and skills of OECD states “Unless we measure learning outcomes, judgements about the quality of teaching and learning at higher education institutions will continue to be made on the basis of flawed international rankings, derived not from outcomes, not even outputs—but from idiosyncratic inputs and reputation surveys”.

The assessment of international higher education learning objectives should require more than just simply counting the number of students in international programs or leaving the country. Assessment should involve assessing the promises of having an international education, such as cultural understanding and job marketability. As we discussed in class, education abroad constantly promises that these experiences help the student develop their soft-skills, which would make them more desirable in a competitive and globalized job market. Like the report states, measuring the effectiveness of the long-term goals of international higher education is more difficult because these goals involve intangible variables that are difficult to measure and they require more studies that expand over time and countries. However, it can be done and it is necessary that institutions and countries to do these assessments.

I believe that conducting these assessments and having the information to back up what international higher education promises will allow it to expand and to grow as an essential part of education, especially in the US. Without assessment and its findings all those promises about how great international higher education is for students are just empty claims to potential students and their parents. As skepticism about US higher education and it value increases along with its price, parents and students need to be won over with solid data from assessment in order to be sold on international higher education. Students and their parents need to be able to see the end results and outcomes for programs and how it benefits the student before investing in it.