Martin Henson

International Mobility of Students: Beyond the Numbers - WorldWise - The Chronicle of Higher Education

International Mobility of Students: Beyond the Numbers

March 2, 2011, 10:32 am

By Francisco Marmolejo

The 2010 edition of the iconic Institute of International Education (IIE) publication “Open Doors” has been exhaustively reviewed by many analysts. As expected, higher-education institutions use its results to celebrate successes, especially if there is a positive highlight that may make the news in the local paper. Most of the time facts such as that international enrollment in U.S. higher education are the largest ever or that the number of American students abroad has managed to remain steady are celebrated.

This year for example the number of students studying abroad has reduced by an almost insignificant number — merely 2,089 students.  To put that figure in perspective, the total number of U.S. students who studied abroad in 2009 was a whopping 262,416. Not bad considering today’s difficult economic environment, wouldn’t you agree? Indeed this is an important reason for celebration, but not a corollary good excuse for complacency.

Don’t get me wrong. The facts above are good news, but the story is incomplete, especially if the numbers are reviewed in context. Can we characterize the U.S. higher-education system as internationalized? I doubt it. Much remains to be done before the real celebration begins.

First of all, we must recognize that internationalization is much more than simply the mobility of students. It involves an entire institutional strategy which includes a greater and deeper reconsideration of curriculum as the key tool for adding a global dimension to the preparation of students. Yes, student mobility is part of it, but so is faculty mobility, making a serious efforts to introduce and require second language competencies, etc.

Having said that, in the case of student mobility, the fact that more international students are in the U.S. and more U.S. students now study abroad is clearly a reason to celebrate. There are, however, four additional facts in evidence: there are still too few students benefiting from international preparedness; the proportion of international students (those visiting the U.S. and those going abroad) relative to the total U.S. higher-education enrollment really has not changed substantially in years; the experience of those studying abroad tends to be shallow; and the study-abroad experience continues to mainly be of benefit for better-off students.

Certainly, the 260,327 U.S. students abroad in 2008-09 could twice fill the Maracaná stadium in Rio de Janeiro — the largest soccer stadium in the world, or could fill 3.5 DC-747s per day over the course of an entire year, but let’s not miss the fact that they represent only a tiny 1.3  percent of the total enrollment in U.S. higher education. Yes, surprisingly nearly 99 of each 100 U.S. higher-education students don’t go abroad as part of their studies. IIE emphasizes that U.S. participation in study abroad has more than doubled over the past decade, but the proportion has not changed much, if we consider that the slightly more than 150,000 students abroad in 2000-01 then represented almost 1 percent of the total U.S. enrollment in higher education. It would be a pointless exercise to extrapolate from those numbers but considering this pattern obviates that it would take several decades to substantially increase the proportion of U.S. students abroad if too little is done to encourage a significant change. Public opinion favors increasing the internationalization of higher education in the U.S. as evidenced by the results of a recent poll taken by Nafsa: Association of International Educators.

For the few privileged with the opportunity to study abroad, the tendency is to offer programs that are gradually being narrowed to shorter and shorter international experiences. Some may argue that this is better than nothing. I agree, but more could be done not only to increase the number of participating students and moreover, to improve the quality of their international experiences. More than half of the students who go abroad only participate in a short-term program and close to four out of every 10 prefer traditional destinations locations where, in most cases, English continues to be the language of instruction. A kind of “bubble effect” frequently prevails consisting of groups of U.S. students traveling abroad for a short period of time with their “imported” teacher, remaining together, continuing to speak mainly English even while abroad, and having just a superficial glimpse at the foreign culture and people. This is a reality about which most of us in international education don’t talk much.

Another important challenge in student mobility is that it benefits mostly only better-off students. For instance, most participants in study-abroad programs are students enrolled at four-year colleges. This is a point of concern if we consider that almost half of those enrolled in the nation’s higher-education systems are attending a community college.  It is also disheartening that low-income and minority students remain highly underrepresented among those who study abroad.

Attracting international students and visiting scholars to our campuses undoubtedly is increasingly seen as a positive outcome. It helps to internationalize our institutions by putting our students and faculty members in contact with foreign individuals. Interesting and effective efforts are made by some institutions to take advantage of this unique opportunity. But still too much remains to be done in order to fully integrate foreign students and scholars into the day-to-day life of our institutions. It is also difficult to avoid the temptation to view international students primarily as providers of additional revenues and as a source of prestige and reputation.

Those are additional reasons why, on the one hand, greater degrees of student and faculty mobility should be embraced, but on the other, more effort at the domestic level should be undertaken to internationalize the curriculum and to carefully monitor our progress regarding the internationalization of our higher education institutions.

Higher education is changing all over the world. The nature of tomorrow’s job market and the current and future challenges of a globalized society require more aggressive, effective, and broader efforts in higher education and its internationalization.  Should we continue to wait?

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Actually Going to Class? How 20th-Century. - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Actually Going to Class, for a Specific Course? How 20th-Century.

New learning technologies prompt a rethinking of traditional course structure

Jay Premack for The Chronicle

"There's not really much need for teachers anymore," since so much material is online, says Dekunle Somade, a senior at the U. of Maryland at College Park.

By Jeffrey R. Young

Washington

The first question many undergraduates ask professors on the first day of class is whether they really have to show up.

The way they phrase it is a bit more subtle, says Dekunle Somade, a senior at the University of Maryland at College Park. What his fellow students actually ask is: "Will reruns of lectures be available after class, or at least the full set of PowerPoint slides?"

Mr. Somade told me recently that "the general idea is that if I don't have to come to class, I don't want to come to class—and technology is giving students more and more reason not to come."

That leads to a big question: Why even have a traditional college course? Learning outside of this structure engages students more deeply, recent data indicate. Professors talking for 16 weeks or so, assigning readings, and then testing students often appears to yield a bunch of quickly memorized facts that are soon forgotten. In an era when students can easily grab material online, including lectures by gifted speakers in every field, a learning environment that avoids courses completely—or seriously reshapes them—might produce a very effective new form of college.

That was the provocative notion posed here recently by Randy Bass, executive director of Georgetown University's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, during the annual meeting of the Educause Learning Initiative.

He pointed out that much of what students rate as the most valuable part of their learning experience at college these days takes place outside the traditional classroom, citing data from the National Survey of Student Engagement, an annual study based at Indiana University at Bloomington. Four of the eight "high-impact" learning activities identified by survey participants required no classroom time at all: internships, study-abroad programs, senior thesis or other "capstone" projects, or the mundane-sounding "undergraduate research," meaning working with faculty members on original research, much as graduate students do.

Mr. Bass said he has found the same trend during focus groups he's conducted at his institution. "Over and over again we hear students saying, Yes there's one or two courses, one or two professors, that made a difference," he told the audience. "But otherwise, when you say Where did you get your deepest learning? Where did you have your most pro

found learning experiences at Georgetown? It's always outside the classroom—always outside the formal curriculum."

The message comes at a moment when many college leaders are taking a harder look at the status quo in college instruction. In January a controversial book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press), charged that many institutions shortchange students by asking little in traditional courses, and that students respond with small efforts outside the classroom.

Courses won't go away completely, Mr. Bass argues—they do provide a handy framework. But he said he hopes that professors will stop thinking of them as a goal unto themselves and focus more on linking skills conveyed in the classroom to hands-on student activities. In fact, Mr. Bass asserts that such an evolution has already begun, driven by student demand, a better understanding of how students learn, and a new generation of faculty members trying tech-infused teaching methods.

"Like Bruce Willis at the end of The Sixth Sense," Mr. Bass said of the traditional college course, "perhaps it is dead, but it doesn't quite know it yet."

The Noncourse Vision

For a glimpse into the course afterlife, consider an experimental media-studies class taught last semester at Baylor University by Gardner Campbell, then director of the institution's Academy for Teaching and Learning. Technically, it was a traditional course, but the professor worked to convince students to think differently about the experience.

At the start of each session, Mr. Campbell gave the 11 students a strange kind of pop quiz. For one thing, it was anonymous, so no grades were given. And rather than ask questions about the content of the homework, he asked students to detail how much time and effort they spent preparing for class. Among the questions: Did you talk to a classmate about the assignment? And how many hours did you spend on the reading?

Each person gave themselves a score from 0 to 10, with 0 reflecting no preparation and 10 representing the most, and Mr. Campbell tallied the average of the students' scores and announced that as the collective intellectual health of the class. His main point: The class discussion only really works when everyone is prepared, since he sees himself as a guide to the group rather than as a guardian of information.

The scores started low—between 4 and 5, meaning the students did far less than the assigned homework. Something happened as the term progressed, though, as students bought into the concept. Last semester, Mr. Campbell says, the students ended at an average of 8. "It's something between a game and a motivational technique," he says of his quiz system.

Mr. Campbell, who just started a job as a professor and education-technology official at Virginia Tech, did not record the lectures—you had to be there to experience them. He did invite students to pass notes in class using Twitter, and he encouraged students to continue to share ideas there after class ended.

He asked each student to create a blog, sharing their ideas and reflections during the term, and he created a "mother blog" that brings together entries from the students. He also asked students to comment on one another's blogs as well as link to blogs both inside and outside the class. "The commenting and linking are crucial," he says, "as those activities are essential parts of being in the real blogosphere."

His hope is that students will continue blogging even though the course has ended. The thing he hopes to hear most from students on the last day of class: "Let's keep this going."

The UnCollege

Some universities have gone even further to challenge the course model. At Worcester Polytechnic Institute, administrators run seven-week immersion projects with no lecture component, in which students work in teams on projects that benefit nonprofit organizations. Mr. Bass, of Georgetown, describes that as a harbinger of things to come. 

If the core activity at college shifts away from the classroom and into practical activities, do students even need to come to a campus?

Dale Stephens, a 19-year-old freshman at Hendrix College, plans to drop out of school to start what amounts to a social network for students outside the traditional classroom. The group members will trade tips on how to learn enough to get the jobs they're aiming for, with the aid of several mentors. Some mentors are professors at Hendrix, but some come from other colleges.

He calls his effort UnCollege, and the plan is to charge participants $100 per month to gain access to the Web site and a network of mentors. Everything will be self-directed—unstudents will decide what "assignments" they should complete and then evaluate how well they think they've done. Participants are encouraged to post their projects and self-evaluations online to form their "experience transcript."

Mr. Somade, of Maryland, says "there's not really much need for teachers anymore," since so much is online. He made that argument in a recent editorial in the university's student newspaper,The Diamondback: "We no longer need to have personal contact with teachers to absorb much of the material, and you can rest assured universities have taken notice," he wrote. "There is definitely a broader array of options available to students who wish to forgo the commute to class altogether in exchange for online classes that essentially provide the same content that professors regurgitate to students in lecture."

But many college leaders I talked with, even those favoring some unconventional approaches, said they aren't worried about being displaced by any form of collegiate home-schooling.

Colleges themselves will continue to work because they bring smart, motivated students together with experts in a single community, says John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design. Students at the college organize a system of courses each January, called "Quickies," which they teach themselves.

Mr. Maeda argues that the fundamental model of the university isn't broken, but that courses are bound to evolve as new technologies and expectations emerge.

Companies that sell systems that record lectures, meanwhile, insist that the recordings can be used without turning classrooms into ghost towns. In some cases, though, that's because professors in those classes require attendance or give more pop quizzes to keep students in the seats.

Mr. Campbell, of Virginia Tech, argues that moves like making recordings of lectures available to students after class can help drive home the lack of interaction in many classrooms.

"It unmasks the illusion that what we're doing has the meaning we think it has," he said. "We've created this really bad bargain. We'll stand up there and not expect much from students, and they won't complain."

College 2.0 covers how new technologies are changing colleges. Please send ideas to jeff.young@chronicle.com or @jryoung on Twitter.

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University World News - NORWAY: Fears for future of sociology

NORWAY: Fears for future of sociology Jan Petter Myklebust
23 January 2011
Issue: 155

A high-level panel of sociologists has found that the multidisciplinary research environments in which most PhD students in sociology spend a large part of their training pose a threat of weaker long-term sociological competence in Norway.

The sociologists, all from Nordic states, agree that "a substantial amount of high quality research has attained international attention". But they recommend intensified efforts to "develop theoretical and methodological research within sociology".

The report says that problem-oriented empiricism is a strength of Norwegian sociology. Problems related to the welfare state, family, sex and organisation dominate in all examined research institutions. Recently, the integration of immigrants, family roles in the home and exclusion from the workforce have gained Norwegian sociologists' attention.

However Sverker Sørlin, professor of environmental history at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and author of studies on research and research history, said the report "unidimensionally promotes sociological orthodoxy" and does not address the "challenges of today and the future, which will demand more multidisciplinary approaches".

Thirteen research units comprising 177 sociologists were included in the evaluation. The panel states that the strength of Norwegian sociologists in problem-oriented research "brings with it a risk that core issues of sociology and further theorising around these issues will not be given sufficient attention".

In the first decades after World War II there was a "golden age of Norwegian sociology", when several Norwegian sociologists, under the influence of US colleagues, "imported a problem-oriented and...social reality-oriented sociology in Norway".

In particular, a visit by Paul Lazarsfeld, founder and director of Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, made a strong impact. Sociological research was developed into a critical discipline and, through participating in public debate, influenced the consequences of social change, notably for weaker and less privileged groups in society.

Today the sociology profession constitutes 850 members, which made one prominent Norwegian sociologist claim there were more sociologists in Norway than in any other Nordic country.

The geographical and institutional mobility of Norwegian sociologists is low: 97% of those working at the University of Oslo graduated there. The panel calls for more research experience at institutions abroad and greater use of foreign adjunct professorships.

The average age of the sociologists is 47 years, while 55% of the 47 professors at these units are 55 years or older, meaning that there will be a need to replace 300 researchers over the next 15 to 20 years. Women comprise 42% of all professors in sociology - a very high proportion in an international context.

During the 2001-08 period, the Norwegian Research Council allocated NOK410 million (US$70.5 million) to projects classified as sociological research. The two main thematic programmes were welfare and working life research.

Sørlin, who in 2006 chaired a Danish panel examining PhD education in Denmark, said: "I think it may be right to strengthen sociology in the core areas given the preconditions in Norway at the time of reporting. But it is surprising that the report does not relate sociology more to the real, great challenges that researchers are facing for the near future and coming generations. Global change, environment and constant crisis related to nature and society are some keywords.

"To influence such a research agenda sociology must as precisely as the other social and humanistic sciences think through the agenda for research and methodology, and not only strengthen those areas that during the 19th Century were regarded as sociology's core areas." 

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In Study Abroad, Simple Is Sophisticated - International - The Chronicle of Higher Education

In Study Abroad, Simple Is Sophisticated

By Wendy Williamson

When I was 23 years old and working for the Peace Corps in Africa, I lived in a mud hut with no running water, no electricity, and virtually no technology or modern-day conveniences. I collected rainwater in containers, bathed in a bucket, and used a latrine outside. I lived with cockroaches, tarantulas, snakes, and other critters. But my life was simple. Today I cannot live without my BlackBerry, every minute of every day is scheduled, and my life is complex.

The difference between my life today and my Africa experience brings to mind the quote from Leonardo da Vinci: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

My field, study abroad, is far from simple, and if you follow the buzz, you probably know how "unsophisticated" it can be. A recent study at the University of Washington, published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, found that many American students double their alcohol consumption while studying abroad in Europe, Australia, or New Zealand. Study abroad has long been associated with partying and, as a recent article in The Chronicle put it, "a perk for wealthy students at selective colleges."

This is disappointing because many of us who work with college students, or send them to other countries to study, have higher aspirations for their international experience than drinking more alcohol or backpacking around Europe. We see study abroad as education, not vacation, and we honestly believe that the study-abroad experience has the potential to change lives, and the world, for the better.

There are two ways in which we can approach education: linear and circular.

Linear education is the traditional approach. It treats the teacher as the giver of knowledge and the student as the receiver. Knowledge is static, passed in one direction, and is one-dimensional.

Circular education takes a systems approach. Education is an interrelational, experiential process to engage with rather than follow. Knowledge is dynamic, passed in various directions, and is multidimensional.

Sophisticated study abroad is more than going to college in another country; it's a shift from linear to circular education.

Instead of asking, "How can we educate international students?," those of us who work with college students ask, "How can we foster international education?" Instead of asking, "What courses and activities can benefit international students and their education?," we ask, "How can we create an atmosphere where local people, culture, art, and the environment are the classroom?" Instead of asking, "How can we integrate international students with locals, businesses, and the community?," we ask, "How can we facilitate communication among them?"

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U. of California Endorses 3-Year Degrees and Online Education - The Ticker - The Chronicle of Higher Education

U. of California Endorses 3-Year Degrees and Online Education

December 6, 2010, 5:10 pm

A University of California commission said today that the system should offer three-year degrees, expand online education, and increase its enrollment of graduate students and community-college transfer students. The group, the UC Commission on the Future, has been studying how the system should respond to declining state support since last year. It rejected ideas to charge different undergraduate tuition at each campus, to forgo new capital projects, and to adopt a tuition schedule that would promise undergraduates they would pay the same tuition over multiple years.

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Social Sciences: 2010 World Report observes growth in emerging countries | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Social Sciences: 2010 World Report observes growth in emerging countries

The social sciences, which were dominated by western universities for a long time, are gaining ground in Asia and in Latin America, according to a report by the International Social Sciences Council (ISSC), published jointly with UNESCO. Entitled “Knowledge Divides”, it is a worldwide status report about these disciplines.

According to the study, North America and Europe still publish 75% of social science journals worldwide, with 85% of them partially or totally in English. A quarter of them are published in the United States. The disciplines that are the subject of greatest number of publications in the world are economics and psychology.

Two-thirds of social science journals in the world are published in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany.  The UNESCO and ISSC report highlights contrasting developments in the different regions of the world. Social sciences are developing in countries such as China, India and Brazil.

Thus, in Brazil, the number of social science researchers has practically tripled in the last ten years. In China, the Social and Human Sciences budget has increased by 15 to 20% a year since 2003.   Despite this imbalance, the authors observe that the strongest growth in the number of articles published is in Latin America and Europe.

On the other hand, the Russian Federation and Commonwealth of Independent States have seen a sharp drop since the disappearance of the Soviet Union, due to the falling number of researchers and their ageing, while Russian universities struggle to attract new talent. In Sub-Saharan Africa, three quarters of publications in the field of social sciences are from a few universities that are mainly located in three countries; South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.  

This situation can be partly explained by the brain drain, even if Africa is far from being the only region concerned. The authors thus note that one doctor of economics in three working in the United States and nearly one doctor of social sciences in five was born abroad.  “As this report illustrates, social scientific knowledge is often least developed in those parts of the world where it is most keenly needed,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, in her foreword to the text. “Social scientific endeavour is also poorer for its bias towards English and English-speaking, developed countries. This is a missed opportunity to explore perspectives and paradigms that are embedded in other cultural and linguistic traditions.”  

The authors observe that the world needs the social sciences more than ever, in order to confront the major challenges facing humanity, such as poverty, epidemics and climate change. Social sciences do not respond to these challenges as much as they should, mainly due to disparities in the research capacities of different countries.  Several hundred social science specialists from all over the world have contributed their expertise to this report. Gudmund Hernes, President of the ISSC, François Héran, Director of Research of the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), Adebayo Olukoshi, Director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (UNIDEP), and Hebe Vessuri, Director of the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC) are among the experts who presented the Report during its launch at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters today. “The social sciences have become truly glob

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Particularly interesting to note the growth of Social Science in the BRIC countries -- especially the tripling of faculty capacity in social science in Brazil in the last decade.

University World News - NIGERIA: Dramatic increase in female undergraduates

NIGERIA: Dramatic increase in female undergraduates Tunde Fatunde
05 September 2010
Issue: 0061

The number of female students in Nigeria has risen almost seven-fold since independence in 1960 and women could soon outnumber their male counterparts in the country's universities, according to experts. Recently released statistics show the proportion of female students rose from 7.7% in 1960 to 45% in 2009.

Research and interest in gender in higher education has grown as the number of women students has increased and the gap between the genders in subjects such as law, engineering, medicine and pharmacy has closed.

In a paper titled 'Impact of Economic Depression on the Education of Male/female Undergraduates in Nigeria', Aina Sola, a lecturer in the sociology department at Lagos State University, details the gradual rise of female enrolment in universities.

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What has been a long-standing trend in Nigeria has accelerated of late. A phenomenon that is evident in other parts of the world -- for example in the countries of Wes Asia, and the Gulf in particular.

Texas A&M System Will Rate Professors Based on Their Bottom-Line Value - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education

September 2, 2010

Texas A&M System Will Rate Professors Based on Their Bottom-Line Value

By Katherine Mangan

The Texas A&M University System is moving ahead with a controversial method of evaluating how much professors are worth, based on their salaries, how much research money they bring in, and how much money they generate from teaching, The Bryan-College Station Eagle reports.

Under the proposal, officials will add the money generated by each professor and subtract that amount from his or her salary to get a bottom-line value for each, according to the article.

Frank Ashley, vice chancellor for academic affairs for the 11-campus system, said the public wanted accountability. "It's something that we're really not used to in higher education: for someone questioning whether we're working hard, whether our students are learning. That accountability is going to be with us from now on."

Peter Hugill, who heads the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, blamed a conservative think tank with ties to Gov. Rick Perry for coming up with an idea that he said is simplistic and relies on "a silly measure" of accountability.

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What do we think of this?! Is it not yet another dysfunctional KPI? As some have noted in the comments to this article, teaching income exceeds research money typically, and those teaching introductory or popular courses will look very good -- especially if they retain their students. What about those of us that teach the "intellectually crucial" but perhaps hard and unpopular courses? What about those who secure grants though agencies (such as charities) that do not provide overheads, or (like the EU) only partial overheads? Keep this in Texas please!

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Nine Problems That Hinder Partnerships in Africa - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Gianpaolo Pagni for The Chronicle

By John D. Holm and Leapetsewe Malete

African higher education faces a crisis. The quality of university teaching and research has declined drastically as institutions across the continent contend with budget cuts, growing enrollments, repeated strikes, a crumbling infrastructure, and a migration of the most talented professors to developed countries.

In response, universities from America and Europe, government aid agencies, and charitable foundations have started major efforts to help rebuild higher education in Africa. While those projects have dedicated substantial funds and human resources to the cause, they so far have produced mixed results. The problem is that representatives of universities from developed countries and other well-intentioned people come to Africa with basic assumptions that undermine their work.

Those assumptions about how to assist the region are not always explicit. They are manifested in subtle ways in the behavior and speech of higher-education officials who come to Africa. What's more, the officials often fail to examine their own assumptions, some of which are obviously unrealistic. To be sure, not all Europeans and North Americans make such mistakes. But as the former and current directors of the Office of International Education and Partnerships at the University of Botswana, over the past four years we have seen such assumptions ruin potentially promising endeavors.

While many factors lead to the failure of partnerships, we have identified nine problems that hinder outside aid to Africa's universities and several ways to improve the interaction between African academics and their peers.

See the remainder of this article here: http://chronicle.com/article/Nine-Problems-That-Hinder/65892/#

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