Latitudes: For International Education, a Bright Future or a Gloomy Outlook?

Readers weigh in on whether we are at the end of a golden era for internationalization. [Latitudes Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. You can now read The Chronicle on [Flipboard]( and [Google News](. Reading the tea leaves for international education A [few issues ago]( I wrote about findings from a survey by the American Council on Education showing that fewer colleges were expanding their internationalization efforts in recent years and that the pullback from international activities had preceded the pandemic. The survey results reflected concerns I had heard anecdotally from international-education administrators, who reported having a more difficult time making the case for their work to campus higher-ups. I threw some questions out to readers: Are we at the [end of a golden era]( for internationalization? Could the nature of global academic engagement be changing, and just what might the future look like? I heard from many of you, pessimists and optimists alike, and some themes emerged: Mobility can’t be the only metric. Overseas experiences have to be more equitable and accessible. International education must grapple with today’s global challenges while demonstrating its relevance to students and academic leaders and their broader educational goals. (Some readers also raised methodological questions about the ACE survey.) Here’s just a sampling of the responses I got. I’ll be back with more in the coming weeks. Adam Freed, global-engagement project manager for the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor’s School of Information, said he didn’t think international education was at the end of a golden period but rather “approaching the middle bit of an S-curve.” “It’s not hard to see why some stagnation or even backsliding is happening across international education,” he wrote, ticking off a multitude of headwinds, including the Covid-19 pandemic, a global economic slowdown, and the war in Ukraine. “There are a lot of reasons why the prevailing wisdom among administrators might be to hunker down and weather the storm.” But other readers did see a retreat from a focus on internationalization, and several pointed to colleges’ handling of the international-student boom of the past decade and a half as a possible reason. Christopher Newfield, director of research at the Independent Social Research Foundation, in London, criticized colleges for enrolling more overseas students as a [revenue source]( without investing sufficiently in academic and other support services for them. In the University of California system, where Newfield was a professor on the Santa Barbara campus, the rapid increase in international enrollments led to problems such as social isolation, crowding out in popular majors such as economics, and higher rates of cheating than in the overall student population, he charged. People become cynical about international education if they think it’s a money grab, said Newfield, who is president of the Modern Language Association. “Everyone likes international education in theory (and also the individual students who are so often wonderful). But because it was a for-profit venture, it was never given the infrastructure it needed, and so a bad time was had by (nearly) all, including many of the students.” What golden era? Still other readers questioned if international education ever truly had a golden era. Sabine C. Klahr, associate vice provost for global at Penn State University, said she recently took part in a leadership program for aspiring presidents and provosts. Many topics were covered in the program, she said, but internationalization was not among them. “It’s not seen as standard knowledge needed by administrators,” she wrote. Klahr noted that there has been some contraction in colleges’ international work because of the pandemic, “but the bigger issue, I believe, is that it has never been fully embraced and made a priority by the majority of institutions in the U.S. to begin with. The U.S. needs a national strategy, senior international officers need to be part of the institutional leadership, and the role of SIO should be a standard leadership position in higher education.” One problem, Klahr said, is that international education has often been defined narrowly, as international students enrolling at American colleges and American students studying abroad. “Most of higher-education leadership hears ‘international education,’ and all they think of is student mobility,” agreed Meredith McQuaid, associate vice president and dean of international programs for the University of Minnesota system. “We can’t even say if we’ve won if all we can count is mobility.” McQuaid told me that international educators must get better at talking about their work and have clearer and more multifaceted ways of measuring its impact: “Maybe we need new words, new vocabulary, to describe what we do — and to excite others.” Michael Woolf, deputy president for strategic development for Capa: The Global Education Network, said there’s a need to re-evaluate assumptions about what “good” international education looks like. Too often, he said, the models held up as ideal are Western or even specifically American. For other parts of the world, they may not be culturally appropriate or even achievable. “It takes serious cash to define your community as international,” Woolf wrote, noting that student exchanges and participation in international academic conferences can be costly. “If institutional commitment to the goal of internationalization is a critical measure of quality, we are, unintentionally and unconsciously perhaps, creating a hierarchy based upon wealth, and re-enacting quasi-colonial attitudes,” he said. “We need to see the principle of comprehensive internationalization critically through a lens of greater humility and an awareness of implicit bias.” Several readers said that global learning needs to grapple more directly with the significant issues of our time, such as sustainability, human rights, and global citizenship. Linyuan Guo-Brennan, a professor of international and global education at the University of Prince Edward Island, in Canada, wrote that the need for international education has increased, but it must be “a reconceptualized model toward the global common good.” International education must be mainstreamed into teaching, learning, and research, she added, not walled off in study abroad. Back to Freed, of the University of Michigan, and his S-curve. He posited that two developments are “the next big thing that will accelerate us back into growth”: internationalization at a distance and “truly collaborative” global partnerships. With travel halted, the pandemic forced international educators’ hands when it came to virtual learning, leading to the overnight creation of virtual study-abroad programs and internships, and better delivery of online education to students stuck overseas. Such efforts should continue since today’s students are digital natives, Freed said. “We’ve taken baby steps in that direction as a field, but soon we’ll be taking great leaps.” And too often, partnerships with overseas universities have been one-dimensional, focusing on student exchanges or joint research, Freed said, predicting that international collaborations will become more robust and less siloed. “We haven’t had to work too hard to gain traction over all in the higher-ed space for the past few decades,” he wrote. “It’s going to feel harder moving forward, but there are still ample opportunities for growth and to extend that ‘golden era.’” As I mentioned, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and I’ll be back in the coming weeks with more responses, including how some veteran international-education administrators see the field and its challenges. In the meantime, please continue to send me your thoughts: What do you make of the takes shared here? What do you think are the biggest pressure points for international education? Which topics need more airing? As always, you can find me at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. Chinese student arrested for threatening democracy activist A Chinese student at the Berklee College of Music has been arrested and charged with stalking an activist who posted fliers in support of democracy in China, the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston [announced](. Xiaolei Wu allegedly threatened the unidentified victim, “Post more, I will chop your bastard hands off.” He also said he would report the victim’s family to security services in China and post the individual’s email address publicly to encourage others to harass the victim. While the charges against Wu are unusual, Chinese students in the United States have said they worry they could be at risk of being reported to Chinese authorities for protesting or speaking critically of the government in Beijing. Last month I spoke with a student journalist at Yale University who had asked to have her byline removed from an article on a campus demonstration against China’s “zero Covid” policy. “People need to understand that even in America, I don’t have the same rights that Americans do,” the student [told me](. Around the globe After the Taliban banned women from [attending universities]( in Afghanistan, the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, and more than a dozen foreign ministers released a [joint statement]( condemning the action and calling on the Afghan government to allow women and girls to “exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms.” A new study finds that Chinese-written research papers in chemistry are [cited]( half as frequently by American researchers as papers with principle investigators from other countries. Even when controlling for research quality, the authors found that Chinese papers got 28 percent fewer citations. U.S. government investigations into research ties with China have dampened Sino-American scientific collaboration, according to a [Stanford University study](. An analysis of scientific papers in the database PubMed found that papers published jointly by American and Chinese researchers have declined 2 percent since 2018, while citation rates have fallen 7 percent. Efforts in Congress to provide a [pathway to citizenship]( for college students and other young Americans brought to the United States as children fell short in the legislative session that ended in December. As part of a [deal]( to end a strike by graduate-student workers, the University of California will cover up to three years of supplemental tuition for eligible international students. The high nonresident fees were a [major issue]( in the monthlong walkout. An American student who went missing while studying in France has been [found]( in Spain. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has extended special student relief for students from [Yemen]( facing economic hardship because of the conflict and crisis in their home country. The U.S. Department of State will start an [engineering and diplomacy fellowship]( “based on the premise that advancements in science and technology are poised to define the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century.” The State Department announced the creation of an office to coordinate policy on [China](. Travelers from China will need a [negative Covid test]( to enter the United States after cases spiked in the Asian country. Nearly 1,500 students have been named [Gilman Scholars]( the American-government fellowship to make study abroad more accessible to low-income and first-generation college students and those from diverse backgrounds. Undergraduates in Russia will be required to take a [patriotic education course](. Leaders of liberal-arts colleges outside the United States are invited to participate in a study of world-view diversity education. The study seeks insight from campus leaders to understand how religious, secular, and spiritual diversity is framed, approached, and connected to other trends and initiatives in global learning. Learn more or refer a campus [here](. The U.S.-China Education Trust is seeking to [survey]( Chinese alumni of American colleges who graduated between 1991 and 2021 about their backgrounds, expectations, and experiences studying in the United States. And finally … Welcome back! How was your break? I drove from California to Colorado via New Mexico, where I ate the most delicious Hatch-chile burrito and got to cross another state visited (No. 42!) off my list; humored my family’s fascination with ugly Christmas sweaters; and read five books. The latter’s something I want to keep up in the new year — reading for fun, what a concept! — along with getting back into distance swimming. What about you? How will you relax and recharge in 2023? I want to hear your New Year’s resolutions and your news. You can drop me a line, at karin.fischer@chronicle.com, or connect with me on [Twitter]( or [LinkedIn](. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can [sign up here](. Thank you for reading. NEWSLETTER FEEDBACK [Please let us know what you thought of today's newsletter in this three-question survey](. This newsletter was sent to {EMAIL}. [Read this newsletter on the web](. [Manage]( your newsletter preferences, [stop receiving]( this email, or [view]( our privacy policy. © 2023 [The Chronicle of Higher Education]( 1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037