By Richard Ekman

During CIC’s 2001 strategic planning roundtables, one topic that surfaced was whether CIC ought to help member colleges and universities “internationalize” their programs. Responses then were largely negative: some colleges were already well served through regional consortia or arrangements with agencies such as IES Abroad, and others didn’t view internationalization as a high priority.

No longer. Whether caused by a new outlook after 9/11, the popularity of Friedman’s The World is Flat, or other changes in the world, American colleges are now, almost without exception, eager to enhance the international experiences of their students.

In his recent Presidents Institute presentation, Humphrey Tonkin raised three key questions about international programs. Is the academic content worthwhile? Will the overseas experience compel “social adaptation”—seeing the world as someone of another society sees it? Will the time away from the U.S. be long enough to afford an adolescent deeper self-understanding—and recognition of “authentic disagreements” about what it means to be human?

But how is a small college to begin? The world may be flat but it is still vast, and few colleges can maintain programs everywhere. It helps to have a focus. For example, Earlham College (IN) focuses on societies in conflict, such as Northern Ireland, while Goshen College (IN) emphasizes developing countries and models its overseas programs on its domestic service-learning programs.

In earlier decades some U.S. colleges focused on the sites of ancient civilizations—such as classical Greece, Rome, or countries of Biblical significance—but that rationale is now less compelling. Even the strategic importance of the Middle East to national security has not led to many study-abroad programs there.

Even on one continent the choices can be daunting. Imagine that the faculty, board, dean, and president believe that highest priority should be the creation of a new program that allows American students to study in Asia and Asian students to come to the U.S. campus. For all the talk about China as the coming economic and political power, that alone is not sufficient reason to make China the focus. An equally compelling case exists for India—with its growing economy, gigantic population, successful democracy, and cultural achievements. Or Korea in a few more years. And have we forgotten our view of Japan in the 1980s?

Recently the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) sent me to visit German universities, on the assumption that the newly emerging private universities and restructured public institutions (thanks to the European Union’s Bologna Process) could develop more partnerships with U.S. institutions. Several private institutions in Germany already are achieving high rankings (and offer innovative financing plans that allow students to repay loans as a percentage of salaries over a ten-year period, with allowances made for those graduates with family obligations and/or in low-paying professions). When I met the president of a German institution, I usually could think of a specific U.S. college or university that might find this German institution especially compatible. In truth, many academic exchange programs have resulted from serendipitous partnerships between faculty members or administrators in two institutions, and they succeed as long as there is interest and trust between the partners.

But in light of Tonkin’s criteria, I wonder how a U.S. college should make deliberate choices to focus on Germany and then on a specific institution. The rationale might be that Germany is one of the world’s largest and wealthiest democracies and is wedged between the established capitalist West and the emerging capitalist East. Surprisingly few U.S. students now travel to Germany to study—only 6,000, compared with 32,000 U.S. students a year in the UK and 20,000 in Spain. Germany is rapidly developing programs that are taught exclusively in English—not so much to attract U.S. students as to attract students from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. These are students who once would have flocked to the U.S. but now are likely to seek American-style education outside the U.S.

Why, then, aren’t American students going to Germany in greater numbers? The difficulty of the German language (compared with Romance languages) is sometimes cited as a disincentive, but this explanation ignores the preponderance of U.S. students who do study abroad and choose English-speaking countries. And the dramatic decline over the last 15 years of foreign language enrollments in French, German, and Italian is not close to being offset by new enrollments in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Russian.

What does this portend for studies in Asia? Can American students achieve the full benefits of a study-abroad program without Chinese language skills? Should American students prefer India or other Anglophone countries?

And what about less traveled, less studied parts of the world? The U.S. needs experts on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central and Southeast Asia, and Africa, as Secretary of State Rice’s recent reassignment of hundreds of Foreign Service officers to those regions has underscored. The number of people who are being trained by U.S. colleges and universities to be experts about these cultures is tiny. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2003 U.S. universities produced a total of 75 new PhDs in French, but only nine in Chinese, six in Russian, four in South Asian languages, and absolutely none in Arabic, East European, or African languages.

December was a month of uncharacteristic foreign travel for me. I also participated in a conference in Istanbul organized by the Hollings Center and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, on the growing private sector of higher education in Muslim countries. Leaders of private universities in Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey were there, along with a number of Americans including CIC member presidents David Maxwell of Drake University (IA), Elizabeth Coleman of Bennington College (VT), and Richard Detweiler of the Great Lakes Colleges Association. In Muslim countries, private institutions are growing rapidly, sometimes because public universities are not able to meet growing demand and sometimes because public universities are widely regarded as politicized and/or of low quality. Newer private institutions are eager for cooperation with U.S. colleges and universities. The current number of U.S. students in exchange programs with these countries is minuscule. In contrast to the 22,000 American students who study each year in Italy, the numbers for Egypt (573), Turkey (200), and Jordan (65) are very small. John Lombardi reminds us in his excellent essay in the January 16, 2006 Inside Higher Education that the rhetoric of the recent “summit” convened by Secretaries Rice and Spellings about internationalization did not make clear that it is up to each college and university to ensure that students receive an adequately international education, while the federal role should be to serve the national interest with a ready supply of experts on strategic languages and cultures.

Mike Peters, president of St. Johns College (NM), Doug North, president of Alaska Pacific University, Mark VanderHeyden, president of St. Michael’s College (VT), and Pam Jolicoeur, president of Concordia College at Moorhead (MN) participated, despite the overlap, in both the summit in Washington and the CIC Presidents Institute in Florida.

Many CIC colleges and universities are in the forefront of internationalization. According to the Institute of International Education, smaller, private institutions dominate every list of percentages of students who study abroad. At Austin College (TX), Wofford College (SC), and Centre College (KY), for example, more than 40 percent of all students take part in overseas programs. Pacific Lutheran University (WA) now runs programs on all seven continents.

The time for serendipity has passed and the time for deliberate institutional decisions about the focus and shape of international programs has come. No matter how large or small our programs, no matter which parts of the globe we emphasize, no matter what brought us to understand that every American college graduate must be prepared for an internationalized world, it is time to put these issues near the top of our academic planning priorities. Do some CIC member institutions offer distinctive opportunities for international study? Clearly, they do, and we can do more.