Hoffa, William W.

Study Abroad: A Parent's Guide\

NAFSA: Assoc. of International Educators. (1998)

Part 1: The Case for Study Abroad

My expectations changed a lot during the course of my time abroad. I originally embarked as an escape process. I needed to get away, do some thinking, and maybe redefine who I thought I was and what I was doing. As the semester progressed I started to pay more attention to the economy, landscape, and politics of Spain. Then my focus changed again from getting to know Spain to getting to know my own country. By living in a different environment I was given a different glimpse of life in the United States. That made me think about the world and its future and my place in it. I think it doesn't really matter why you begin a foreign study adventure, because for as many reasons as you think of, many more will pop up during the experience. It is important to have a focus, but also to recognize that the focus may change and that change indicates you are getting the full benefit from your experience. --Christina Ward, Spain

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In a world becoming every year more interdependent, the educational value to students of spending at least some portion of their undergraduate years living and learning in another country is no longer really debatable. The global competence and alertness students gain through such an experience is crucial to American national interests, as well as to the interests of students themselves. Today, students who leave college without having had a significant globalizing experience as part of their undergraduate education may appear to employers as not fully educated for the world they are entering.

Study abroad encourages self-reflection. Seeing ourselves as others see us-- and ultimately, perhaps, as we are-- is something not easy to do at home. Put another way, fish never know they are wet, because they lack the contrast of air. As anthropologists tell us, we travel with our cultural baggage. That baggage simultaneously identifies us to others and filters out that which we are unwilling or unable to see and know. Learning comes through the gradual process of shedding as much baggage as possible and seeing anew.

As students learn about the foreignness of other lands, cultures, and people, they learn invaluable lessons about themselves as Americans. Perhaps for the first time, they become able to distinguish those parts of themselves that are products of their time and place in American society from those that are universal. This degree of personal and national self-knowledge cannot be gained at home, whatever the resources of their college or university and however high their personal motivation.

At its best, study abroad:

-- Enriches and diversifies undergraduate education by offering courses, programs, and academic learning of a sort not available on the home campus.

-- Provides U.S. students with a global outlook that emphasizes the ties among nations and cultures, the universality of human values, and the necessity of working together

-- Enhances career preparation by teaching cross-cultural and workplace skills of value to today's employers, often through internships and other hands-on experiences

-- Deepens intellectual and personal maturity, fosters independent thinking, and builds self-confidence.

Isolationism and Internationalism: Poles of the American Experience

The role of the United States as a leader among nations is changing rapidly. Despite our position of international leadership for almost fifty years, we are ill-prepared for the changes in business, manufacturing, diplomacy, science and technology that have come with an intensely interdependent world. Effectiveness in such a world requires a citizenry whose knowledge is sufficiently international in scope to cope with global interdependence. -- Advisory Council for International Educational Exchange, Educating for Global Competence, 1988

Despite of our heritage as a nation of immigrants, our geography has, for most of our national history, kept us at home and other lands at a distance. Beginning with George Washington, we have heard from our national leaders about the dangers of involving ourselves too much in the affairs of other countries and losing our native integrity and self-sufficiency.

As a nation we have ventured abroad in significant numbers only when provoked by dramatic external threats to our domestic security or "the American way of life." The most notable examples of those overseas ventures fall within the memory of parents of today's students: our joining with the Allies to defeat the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany in World War II, and our opposition to the spread of communism during the Cold War.

Isolationist thinking has also often fostered the illusion of national self-dependency, of being separate in our national destiny from the rest of the world and the feeling that other nations and cultures have little or nothing to teach us. Even our full participation in international bodies such as the United Nations is frequently constrained by the fear that American sovereignty will be sacrificed in favor of a "one-world" illusion of internationalism.

There is, of course, an equally strong internationalist strain to American culture. We have always been a nation of imports and exports, and we have been diplomatically active throughout our history. The international dimension of American culture is celebrated in our long heritage of making room in the national fold for successive waves of immigrants from all corners of the world. This is what Walt Whitman celebrated when he called America, "a Nation of nations." Our awareness of this heterogeneous diversity at home promotes the illusion, however, that we are more international than our perspectives and actions reveal us to be.

Another limiting factor in U.S. thinking about the rest of the world has been the emergence over the last half-century of English as the world language. This linguistic and cultural development has unfortunately had the effect of allowing Americans to think that any accommodations that need to be made with the rest of the world can or will be made on our linguistic and cultural terms.

Today English is indeed likely to be spoken by the majority of educated world travelers and other "world citizens." It is also spoken by businessmen who are successfully selling their products on our shores, and by just about anyone involved in international tourism. But English is not the language spoken by most people in most countries as a native language, something any seasoned traveler can confirm. Among those who know it, it is spoken in addition to the language they speak at home, and perhaps other languages they have also learned.

The world in which most adult Americans grew to maturity no longer exists. The cold war is over. The domestic economy is global. The "melting pot" is boiling over. Our world is in flux.... Unless today's students develop the competence to function effectively in a global environment, they are unlikely to succeed in the 21st century. -- American Council on Education, Educating Americans for a World in Flux (1995)

The "out of sight, out of mind" approach toward other lands and other cultures is now not only unrealistic, but also clearly detrimental. Our nation is involved in world affairs as never before, and our long-range economic and social well-being stems from this successful involvement. Like it or not, our national economic and social destiny can seldom be separated completely from what is happening in other corners of the globe.

It is thus vital that we learn to see ourselves as others see us. This is not because foreign perceptions are necessarily right--indeed, Americans and their country are often woefully misunderstood elsewhere, in part because of the misleading images we export. Nevertheless, our progress as a nation depends on clear-sightedness and pragmatism about ourselves and about the vast majority of the planet that may be dramatically different from what we imagine it to be.

In view of the expanding web of cultural and economic ties in which we are all enmeshed, it is suprising that, numerically at least, study abroad remains a marginal activity in U.S. higher education. The estimated 100,000 students who study or work abroad in a given academic year constitute less than 1 percent of the more than 14 million students enrolled in U.S. higher education. Those unfamiliar with its many educational and career benefits still characterize study abroad as something essential only for foreign language majors. For others it is seen as an escape from domestic academic pressures; an elitist activity for the affluent few with money to burn; an extra, a diversion, a tangent, something for dilettantes, but not for serious students; or as a bonus or privilege for the academically superior.

The nation must commit itself now to providing all students with the kinds of knowledge it once provided to only a few-- a powerful, deep-rooted understanding of other languages, diverse cultures, and global issues. -- American Council on Education, Educating Americans for a World in Flux (1995)

These anachronistic and misleading characterizations of study abroad usually stem from unfamiliarity or ignorance and tend to be heard most often an campuses with little or no study abroad activity. To the extent they are propagated by university faculty and administrators, they may disguise institutional fears and problems. Some administrators at a private, fee-driven institutions are concerned about the effect of study abroad on institutional budgets as students' tuition payments are rerouted into study abroad programs. Faculty, for their part, often do not want their best students, especially those majoring in their discipline, to disappear during the year. Residence life administrators worry about empty beds, admissions offices about finding well-qualified transfer students, and financial aid offices about having to recalculate financial aid packages.

On the other hand, admissions offices report that questions about study abroad opportunities are among the top three asked by high school students trying to decide on colleges, while at many private institutions the proportion of students who study abroad at some point during their undergraduate years can be as high as 30 to 50 percent of each graduating class. Clearly, many students find living and learning overseas of great interest and importance

Trends in Study Abroad

Currently, almost 90,000 students receive academic credit from U.S. institutions for study abroad. This number represents a near doubling from the 1985-86 figure of 48,500.

About two thirds of all U.S. students study in Europe; 15 percent in Latin America; 6 percent in Asia, and less than 3 percent in each of the other regions of the world. The United Kingdom accounts for about a quarter of all enrollments. The other top host countries are France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, Israel, Costa Rica, Australia, and Russia. The percentage of students studying in Europe has dropped slowly, as enrollments in Latin America have risen.

Almost three quarters of all students studying abroad do so in a program sponsored by or affiliated with their home institution; the remainder choose programs sponsored by other institutions.

About half of all study abroaders are juniors; 16 percent are seniors, 12 percent are sophomores, and the remainder are recent graduates. Their majors are humanities and social sciences (35 percent); business (14 percent); languages (11 percent); fine arts (7 percent); and physical sciences (7 percent); with smaller percentages from other majors. As the overseas curriculum for study abroad expands, more students from academic fields not traditionally represented in study abroad will begin to show up in the figures.

Almost two-thirds of study abroaders are women, a long-standing disproportion that is slowly beginning to even out as the overseas curriculum broadens to include fields such as business, science, engineering, and other traditionally male areas of concentration.

Only about 12-13 percent of study abroaders go overseas for an entire academic year. Another 39 percent do so for a semester, with the remainder going abroad for less than a semester. Year-long programs have declined steadily as a percentage of all study abroad, while the popularity of short-term programs continues to grow. In contrast, throughout the early decades of study abroad full academic year programs predominated.

The percentage of white students who study abroad (84 percent) exceeds the overall representation in U.S. higher education (72 percent), but the socioeconomic and racial diversity of study abroad students is gradually increasing. Cost is the primary barrier. At private institutions where all the financial aid can be applied to overseas studies, participation in study abroad programs by students from minority backgrounds is equal to that of white students.

Enriching and Diversifying Home Campus Studies

Study abroad provides a wonderful opportunity to augment the curriculum available to your son or daughter here at home. [Moo's note: I think the book this article was pulled from was geared towards parents of potential study-abroad candidates at a 4-year university]. Consider the appeal of studying marine biology in the West Indies, acting in London, art history in Florence, or development issues in Latin America, South Asia, or Africa. In most cases, with careful planning, students can get full academic credit for their overseas studies.

Depending on the campus, student, and program, credit can be earned in one or more academic categories:

-- In the academic major or minor

-- To satisfy general education or broad degree requirements

-- To fulfill elective requirements

-- As residential or transfer credit

During the years when the "junior year abroad" was the most common form of study abroad, it served the curricular needs and interests primarily of students majoring in language and cultural studies. Given the strong western European emphasis of many U.S. colleges and universities, especially with regard to the languages then taught, most junior year abroad students found themselves in France, Italy, Germany, or Spain. Students without proficiency in a foreign language studied in Britain or Ireland. Almost all JYA students were drawn from the humanities or social sciences.

This traditional bias has over time given way to an enlarged view of study abroad as something that can be done across the curriculum. That is, there are very few academic fields for which at least some overseas course work, offered in one or more programs, is not now available. The best overview of the tremendous variety and range of current curricular offerings is seen in the annual guides to study abroad programming, IIE\'92s Academic Year Abroad and Vacation Study Abroad, and Peterson's Study Abroad. A brief summarization demonstrates the richness of available options.

Language Learning

Students whose primary interest is in the acquisition of a western Europe language can now choose from the huge variety of traditional language and cultural immersion programs. U.S. language department faculty, founders of most of the programs available to students, continue to believe that there is no better way to gain language proficiency than by living and learning in the place where the language is spoken.

In addition, a veritable host of less commonly taught languages can be pursued through study abroad programs. The list is long: Arabic, Czech, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Gaelic, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Nepali, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Shona, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan Twa, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zulu. Many of these languages are not taught on U.S. campuses, even at major universities-- Japanese, Chinese, Russian are the exceptions-- and so studying one of them overseas may be the only way to gain exposure or deepen proficiency.

Students in cultural immersion and area-studies programs study the local language to learn at least its rudiments. Making an attempt to learn the language of one\'92s hosts is always appreciated, especially by host families. Even students who do not achieve full proficiency learn far more in native settings than they ever could at home.

Course Work In the Major (In English)

Four contemporary factors make it possible for U.S. students to do serious academic course work overseas largely in English. These are:

-- The development of short term, summer, quarter, semester, and academic year programs set up and operated in English by U.S. colleges and universities overseas.

-- The existence of special English-language programs in non English-speaking countries, set up for foreigners (sometimes specifically for Americans, sometimes not) by overseas institutions.

-- The growing number of universities in countries where English is widely spoken-- such as the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland-- which offer a partial or full curriculum in English for their own students and now welcome students from other countries.

-- The increasing willingness of universities and other institutions in English-speaking countries to allow the short-term matriculation of overseas students-- especially in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and now South Africa.

Although it is tempting to lament our national monolinguism, the other side of the coin is the incredible array of study abroad opportunities that would not otherwise be available to your daughter or son.

Area and Cultural Studies

Most U.S. colleges and universities offer one or more area studies majors or programs at the undergraduate level, which also may exist as a minor. Latin American Studies, Asian Studies, and European Studies are perhaps the most common. Such concentrations draw upon the course work offered in several academic departments.

Study abroad programs designed to complement area studies programs enable students to experience, in their daily living and learning, the culture they are studying. Obviously there can be no U.S.-based substitute for this unique opportunity. Being surrounded by the artifacts and monuments of history, seeing where and how people live, and learning their language and customs allows students to get under the skin of the culture and at times to feel part of it.

Beyond the study abroad programs that supplement typical area studies offerings, many programs focus on regions and cultures not well represented in the home-campus curriculum. Some focus on the cultural, economic, or political unity of a broad region, for example, the Middle East, South Asia, or Oceania.

Other area studies programs have a narrower focus, stressing the historical unity of a national culture within the area under study. These are taught in English, with language study as an option.

A smaller number of area studies programs delve into some of the historical cultures that now exist as subcultures within one or more large nation states. Thus, there are programs focusing on the Aboriginal culture that survives in Australia, Brazil, and Canada; the sea-linked cultures of the Caribbean and Mediterranean, the ancient Amazonian culture of Brazil and Ecuador, the Celtic and Gaelic heritage of contemporary Ireland and Scotland; Hebraic culture as it exists in Israel and wherever Jews have lived across Europe, Africa, and North America; the Maori culture of New Zealand; Mayan culture in Mexico; the defiant Basque culture in Spain; and even Classical and Renaissance civilization as it has affected Greece, England, and Italy.

With the right preparation, good courses, linked excursions, and meaningful contacts with local people, students find their interest and motivation to learn boosted greatly. More often than not they come away saying how much they have learned in such a short period.

Interdisciplinary and Global Studies

Few subjects can be fully understood within the confines of one academic discipline; few lack an international dimension. But certain fields are by definition more interdisciplinary and more global than others. These involve issues and questions that transcend national borders and cultural confines. Understanding global systems often means focusing studies on problems, rather than on geographical regions or academic disciplines. Common examples of such problem-centered academic programs include: American Studies, African-American Studies, Ecology/Environmental Studies, Health Studies, Conservation Studies, Ethnic Studies, Communications, International Relations, Urban Studies, Women's Studies, and so on. Student interest in any of these areas can be pursued through participation in a study abroad program.

Learning about Culture and National Identity through Study Abroad

The traditional rationale for study abroad was that it provided the opportunity for students to assimilate another culture. That rationale still holds for the 12-13 percent of study abroad students who spend an entire academic year abroad and thus have time for a thorough bicultural experience. What about the 88 percent of students who spend a shorter period abroad? What do they learn about culture? One answer is related to the emergence, for better or worse, of the first-ever global culture.

No matter how much time is spent abroad, your daughter or son will find that the new global culture is permeating and challenging all other cultures, including our own. It is hard to overestimate the impact of ubiquitous and pervasive presences such as:

-- Multinational commercial corporations-- including not only technological giants such as Sony, GM, and Microsoft, but also popular culture food purveyors like McDonalds, clothing manufacturers and distributors like Nike, and hotel chains like Marriott and Holiday Inn

-- Global computer and satellite communications companies like CNN

-- Global distribution networks for industrial products and services, and for popular culture (movies, television, clothing and fashion, music)

-- Global securities markets and banking systems that allow the rapid movement of money and credit across borders

-- Global outsourcing, tariff-free trade agreements, and visa-free and even passport-free borders

The political, economic, and technological realities that support the worldwide mobility of people, capital, and ideas are building the new global culture at home and abroad. Seeing its power and influence outside our national boundaries is for U.S. students very eye-opening. They grow to understand how much of the global culture is driven by U.S. power and influence. Even more suprising to our students is how much is not, and how many other countries are powerful players in the new world system. Finally, they learn that much global activity has no single national base; that ownership materials, labor and distribution are truly international.

Worldwide multicultural and multiethnic realities now either strongly influence or dominate the social reality of almost all developed and developing countries. For that reason, finding global commonalities while learning to value and respect cultural differences has become an essential component of U.S. degree studies. Living and learning overseas is for students an important preparation for the social and multicultural realities that dominate the emerging multicultural work and living environment-- in Boston and Bangkok, Singapore and Seattle, and any other global village that one calls home.

A by-product of such insights is quite often a new and positive awareness of the many positive aspects of American life. While all students learn that other cultures and countries have their own character and appeal, they also return with a refreshed appreciation of the United States. Many come back praising our cultural diversity, openness, natural space and beauty, efficiency, economic vitality, and optimistic spirit. Almost all gain a new respect for the American academic system, and for their own college or university in particular.

Thus, while your son or daughter may or may not "acquire" the traditional host culture of the study abroad destination, it is likely that he or she will experience something even more significant: a wake-up call to a complex of sense of contemporary cultural heterogeneity, to the emerging global culture, to a new synergy between things here and there, to his or her own American identity and to our national presence and power in a changing world environment.

Deepening Personal Identity, Maturity, Independence, and Confidence

Study abroad can be for students a personally transforming experience, a quantum leap in their intellectual and social development. No two students are likely to have quite the same experience or to respond in the same way to that experience, regardless of their plans, motivations, and circumstances.

It is almost guaranteed that your son or daughter will say that studying abroad was one of the best things he or she ever did. Students praise the overseas living and learning experience as having had a major impact on how they feel and think about themselves, about their national identity as Americans, and about the world. They will talk with pride about all the personal and intercultural obstacles they learned to overcome, about the hard times and the many joyful moments. Many will express a yearning to go back as soon as possible, and most will recommend the experience to other students and parents. Most stare with wonder over what they would have missed had they not had the courage and good sense to do it.

In discussing the total educational value of their time abroad, students will invariably stress opportunities they had to challenge, test, and get to know themselves. They will comment on what it was like, often for the first time in their lives, to be truly away from home, away from friends and family, familiar habits and surroundings. They will talk about the experience of going through culture shock, of being an outsider in an environment whose rules and cues they did not understand initially. Many describe it as the hardest thing they ever did, but, because of it, say that they returned more tolerant, confident, and mature because they were able to test themselves against this adversity.

When taking an excursion to see a monument commemorating a battle being discussed in class or touring a farm growing grapes used to make local wine, new connections are made. Meeting a worker on a train who tells them how it "really is" in the country and what will happen in the next election, or talking with a soldier back from service with the United Nations in Bosnia, and other such encounters with native people offer insights and nuances of meaning not found in textbooks. Processing this new information is something students realize they must do for themselves, and they do. The new cognitive skills they develop abroad affect the way they go about learning when they return to their home campus.

Improving Career Prospects in the Global Economy

Technological developments and innovations, once largely the province of the United States and other industrialized western economies, now come from nearly all countries. India and Ireland are leading purveyors of computer software. Southeast Asia leads the world in textile design and modern production techniques. Finland has the best engineering for high-tech dental equipment and cellular telephones. Sweden is as advanced as any nation in the use of industrial robots. U.S. quality control in automobile and other sorts of manufacturing became competitive with Japan's only after we copied Japan's methods and slowly caught up.

The winds of internationalism, in short, now reach all corners of the earth. Today's students are challenged to ride these winds and chart courses that take advantage of their prevailing directions. Most local and national economies, hitherto thought to be partially or exclusively self-sufficient, are linked to a powerful and vast array of international forces and influences. It is in fact hard not to be involved in the global marketplace, wherever one works, whatever one does.

Raw materials for products sold locally and internationally, for instance, seldom originate in the same places where manufacturing and trade take place. They need to be imported or exported, often from and to the corners of the earth. In turn, manufactured goods are increasingly designed to be sold in countries beyond their origin. In the growing service industry, new concepts, technologies, and other essential information and ideas are seldom the exclusive property of one nation. Instead, they cross borders in the contemporary world even faster than people and goods do. Whatever their origin, they are applied worldwide.

This interdependence of all parts of the working world means that those who can bring to their domestic responsibilities a heightened degree of international awareness are more likely to be hired-- and then to succeed. Employers increasingly recognize that applicants who have studied, worked, or even traveled extensively abroad are likely to possess the personal qualities demanded by this new environment:

-- Personal maturity

-- The courage to take risks

-- Imagination

-- Adaptability

-- Grit

-- Self-confidence

-- An awareness that the rest of the world does not always operate according to U.S. standards and terms, or in English

Study abroad, on its own, unsupported by substantive professional or technical knowledge and work experience, typically does not qualify college seniors for the international career that so many come back from overseas imagining: holding a managerial position in an overseas setting with a multinational enterprise that operates simultaneously in many countries, making, buying, and selling products and services around the world.

But it can help graduates focus their career search and even give them an edge when seeking the increasing number of jobs that have an international component. Variants of the "internationalized career" require routine overseas communications in English or a foreign language and regular short-term trips abroad to conduct business, do market research, or offer consultations. Other sorts of domestic work provide opportunities for short-term postings abroad, for example, to oversee the expansion of new operations or in the installation of new technologies. Such home-based, but still internationalized careers exist not only in commerce, banking, law, communications, engineering, and science, but also in the nonprofit service sector, in government, higher education and scholarship, and volunteer service organizations.

Any study and work abroad can also be seen as a practical experience, an investment in the future, almost regardless of duration or destination. Engineers and scientists, businessmen and economic developers, social workers and environmentalists, all increasingly understand that what graduates need to compete successfully in the global marketplace is not only technical knowledge and skills, but also a global perspective and the ability to perform in a cross-cultural context. Foreign exposure builds those personal capacities that most employers are seeking. The experience of being abroad has a tendency to focus student attention on what comes next. Not infrequently, students return expressing an immediate interest in "going back" as soon as possible. Sometimes this translates into thoughts of returning after graduation to live and work, sometimes into a more open-ended decision to seek an international career.

Conclusion

In sum, there are many reasons why study abroad can matter tremendously in the education of your daughter or son, though some may carry more weight than others in the thinking of any individual or family. It is important to consider all of them in making the decision whether to pursue this experience. If the decision is positive, the next challenge is to choose the programs that represent the best fit, the ones that will maximize the possibility of achieving personal, educational, and career-preparation goals. This involves knowing how programs differ from each other, then weighing these variables against each other and coming up with one or more optimal choices.}