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[johnslat]

The Trouble with Going Global

"American universities are eagerly recruiting foreign students and setting up outposts overseas. What�s wrong with the new expansionism.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Just as American businesses and banks have looked overseas for new markets, so our universities are globalizing in a quest for revenue and growth. The numbers behind this new internationalism are impressive. Every year more and more overseas students apply to American campuses: last year, 103,260 came from India, 98,235 from China, even 11,581 from Nepal, according to the Institute of International Education. In a complementary move, American colleges are extending their range by establishing branch campuses abroad, like Carnegie Mellon in Qatar and the University of Nevada in Singapore. At last count, 38 American schools had 65 branches in 34 countries, all mandated to grant the home institution�s degree.
This sounds exhilarating, very 21st century. International engagement, with its interplay of people and ideas, has unquestionable benefits. Yet these globalized ventures are certain to have an impact on education at home.
The first American educational outposts were organized as missionary colleges�like American University of Beirut, founded in 1866 as Syrian Protestant College. While they often earned reputations as the best in the region, the students were sometimes drawn to nationalist causes, frightening the local elites. Today�s efforts are different. Now host countries extend the invitations themselves. China has solicited U.S. liaison programs even before campuses are built. But there remains the question of whether this new internationalism actually represents colonialism in a softer guise. Often these efforts seem intended mostly to add glamour to a school�s brand; the locals can seem beside the point. In this new form, a student from, say, Switzerland will study at an American-sponsored program in Shanghai.
What is driving the new expansionism? In part, these new ventures recall the advice the Red Queen gave to Lewis Carroll�s Alice: �It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.� Schools are clearly looking for new ways to grow. Yet if growth were the sole aim, colleges could establish two-year branches on their campuses or nearby, since that�s where the real educational need is. The problem is that there�s not much prestige in founding a community college. Colleges not quite in the top tier are looking for ways to seem distinctive. So Michigan State sets out for Dubai and Florida State for Panama. Globalization is one of the mantras of the moment; press releases about making an imprint in South Korea or India have an undeniable cachet�not to mention comfort-class visits for university administrators and photo-ops with heads of state.
On the flip side, there are obvious benefits to importing scholars. The influx of foreign students creates a bright blip in our otherwise dismal balance of payments. In 2008, the most recent year for figures, international students spent $18 billion on American education. Many of these visitors come from well-off families who can write full-tuition checks more easily than many of their American counterparts. For others, the fees will be paid by their governments; China and Saudi Arabia, for example, have a lot of dollars piled up in their treasuries.
Foreign students usually come for graduate degrees, chiefly in the sciences and engineering�subjects that attract fewer homegrown Americans. Professors get career points for teaching advanced seminars, so they welcome overseas applicants to fill up what would be empty seats, as well as serve as assistants in labs, which bring in grants. At last count, in 2008, �nonresident aliens� accounted for more than half the Ph.D.s awarded in mathematics, and 60 percent in engineering. More than a few graduate programs can thank their international scholars for their solvency, if not their continued existence. (The grad students also perform another crucial function: teaching the low-status intro math and science classes that more senior faculty disdain.)
Until recently, overseas students accounted for less than 3 percent of all bachelors� degrees. But that is changing, due to vigorous recruiting abroad. The University of Iowa has been a pacesetter. Admissions from foreign high schools make up 10 percent of the freshmen at its already overcrowded Iowa City campus. The impetus isn�t solely cultural diversity. The visitors pay the $23,713 out-of-state tariff, versus $7,417 for local residents. Unfortunately, Iowans who are displaced are finding they have to settle for the Cedar Rapids branch or a community college, a hidden cost to going global. This year, the university overbooked its incoming class by some 400 students, setting off a scramble for space in dorms and classes.
Those foreign graduates who decide to stay on in America have contributed inordinately to our culture of innovation. When it comes to establishing university outposts overseas, however, there are tremendous inefficiencies. Cornell has a satellite medical school in Qatar, which produced all of 17 physicians this year. Georgetown conducts a foreign-service program, also in Qatar. Due to startup costs, the school figures it�s spending $500,000 per student each year. Johns Hopkins has a budget of $20 million for its 100,000-square-foot joint venture with Nanjing University in China. (Hopkins assures prospective students that their dorms are air-conditioned, and their lavatories will have �Western fixtures.�)
The poster school for the new expansionism is New York University. Its media-friendly president, John Sexton, has appeared on television talk shows with Bill Moyers and Richard Heffner to limn his vision of a �global university,� linked by �global technology,� and taught by �global professors.� NYU already boasts outposts in Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Singapore, Tel Aviv, and Abu Dhabi, with more on the drawing board. (Paris was bypassed because of its stringent building codes.)
The Abu Dhabi campus is NYU�s pride and joy. It is to be funded by an undisclosed sum from the emirate. This new school is billed as �the world�s honors college,� with a largely American faculty lured by subsidized housing, school tuition coverage for dependents, and business-class travel. NYU professors are slated to jet in for stints ranging from three weeks to several semesters. Students must meet home-campus admissions criteria and complete equivalent courses, after which they will receive a regular NYU degree, with no asterisk about where the work was done. Its first class of 150 is already enrolled, hailing from 39 countries, with only a handful from the emirates. The college is ultimately aiming for 2,000 undergraduates and 800 graduate students, about the size of Colgate University in upstate New York.
Town-gown problems loom. Abu Dhabi forbids public displays of same-sex affection and the use of key Internet technology. �Authorities censor and harass human-rights activists, impeding independent reporting that could help curb abuses,� says Human Rights Watch Middle East researcher Samer Muscati. NYU insists that its scholars will be able to function freely. Josh Taylor, assistant vice chancellor for public affairs, says the campus will ensure academic freedom and allow faculty, students, and staff to �engage in intellectual exploration and analysis of a wide range of issues.�
Still, it�s obvious there are reasons to be cautious about these enterprises, as some institutions have been. Three years ago, Yale received an overture from Abu Dhabi, but decided to demur. �We just don�t think we could mount a faculty of the same quality we have here, or attract students of the same caliber,� Yale�s vice president Linda Lorimer told The New York Times. Nor do all overseas ventures succeed. George Mason University closed its startup in Ras al-Khaimah, the smallest of the emirates, when it found a paucity of tuition-paying students there. Michigan State made the same discovery in Dubai.
Even if host countries provide initial stakes, there can be eventual costs. Higher education anywhere has high overhead. It is not as if colleges have pools of extra cash. It hardly needs saying that investing overseas takes money that could be put to use at home. Michigan State University had to pay out at least $5 million to close its Dubai campus; its overall outlay was likely several times that, although the university would not release figures. Like many state schools, MSU stints on its undergraduates, having a faculty-student ratio twice that of most private colleges�leading to mega-lectures, computerized examinations, and infrequent contact with senior faculty. That $5 million deployed in the sands of Dubai could have brought in 75 additional assistant professors.
What seems forgotten in this academic Manifest Destiny is that the purpose of higher education is education, especially for our own undergraduates, who all too often are an afterthought at their schools. Of course, this is an international age. But sometimes, when we read of these new enterprises, we can�t help but feel that ill-considered adventures abroad can only strain what�s left of our higher education at home."

http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/13/the-trouble-with-global-education.html

Hacker is on the faculty at Queens College, and Dreifus teaches at Columbia University�s School of Inter-national and Public Affairs. Their book Higher Education? Came out last month.

[Qaaolchoura]

1. This belongs in Current Affairs.

2. It would be nice if you removed the massive copy-paste, and just left a link and some commentary.

3. There's a good reason to branch out to foreign countries. Some people are more suited for college than others, and we Americans get lucky in that we've got the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the world.

However there's a whole lot of students in the rest of the world who are better qualified. However it's hard to get a student visa--you generally have to have *learned* English before you can get one (the exceptions are programs intended solely to teach English), and it's hard to get into an American college for the same reasons. Most of the international students I've met are considerably more qualified for the colleges they attend than the typical American student. And I include myself I was a good student, but I have Nepali and Chinese friends who put me to shame.

And even if it were easier to get into college and get a visa there's still considerable costs to going abroad, and considerable costs to live in the United States. Honestly, as someone who bitches about the protectionism created by the Schengen area, I have enormous sympathy for the non-American students who didn't make it.

Regards,
~Q

[johnslat]

Dear Qaaolchoura,

Thank you for your comments. I think I'll leave it here, though, begging your pardon.
And as for all the space it takes up, well, I think Dave's has enough bandwidth to handle it.

Regards,
John

[Lamentations]

Thanks John Slat.

And I thought yesterday was a bad day! What has happened to my country?

[Qaaolchoura]

[Lamentations]

"...I'm sure that something inspired you to post that...."

I'd like to think that John Slat posted this to warn all Americans "teaching" English overseas that the tide has turned and not for the better.

What will the US college system become? Just another place for 'foreigners' to spend their money looking for a nice degree?

Former UK PM, Gordon Brown, basically said - "All the UK really has to offer now is our 'bogus' degrees". For whatever reasons, a lot of people in different contries consider the British educational system as the cream of the crop.

I once taught a few people who were admitted to a British sanctioned degree program who were definitely not the cream of the crop. Quite frankly, they were the worst, but the parents had a few pounds to spend. They were admitted.

I pray that the US doesn't give in for a few dollars so easily.

What are we/our troops fighting for? A few dollars to help stimulate the economy? JC, we're becoming more like the enemy every day.

Mike Huckabee for President of the USA. Jim DeMint - VP.

Love & Peace

Y

[Sashadroogie]

Dear Johnslat

Interesting article, but I'm not so sure about the comments it is generating....