Tarnish on a Golden Age
Most of the time I really enjoy what I write. I like tracing the paths that bring students from around the world to the U.S. Hearing young Americans talk about the transformative impact of study abroad never gets old. I have a dorky enthusiasm for discussing intercultural competency or the ways in which education can affect economic change.
My cover story in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, not so much.
But the unpleasantness of the subject, the end of the golden era for international education, doesn’t make grappling with it any less urgent.
Some of this is well-trod territory, of course. My first piece on the “Trump effect,” about international students’ aversion to studying under a President Trump, was written months before Election Day. The travel ban and other visa restrictions ushered in by the administration have made those fears reality.
That Trump’s election was in so many ways a repudiation of the world view that international educators embrace, of the values of openness and connection and understanding – I understand it’s been a bitter pill.
Blaming the president, though, doesn’t fully account for the headwinds internationalization faces. During the January meeting of the Association of International Education Administrators, I led a roundtable discussion on current challenges in the field. The room was full, and our list quickly grew to fill several pages of an oversized easel: The difficulty in getting overseas projects off the ground. The struggle for faculty buy-in to integrate global content in the curriculum. The inequities of worldwide mobility. The disconnect between international students and their American classmates. The alarming pace of closure of foreign-language programs.
Would these have been issues under President Hillary Clinton? I have to think so.
As Jenny J. Lee of the University of Arizona told me:
“Real, serious resistance to internationalization is not just coming from within the White House.”
Indeed, some of the resistance – or skepticism or neglect – is coming from higher education itself. The idea that the last decade and a half were a golden age for internationalization is now showing some tarnish.
Rather than recapitulating my piece, let me end on a counterintuitively positive thought.
In reporting this story, I interviewed several dozen people. They catalogued the challenges that they were facing – and just as quickly pivoted to solutions. Scott Stevens at the University of Delaware told me about doubling down on customer service in recruitment, making sure someone was available to respond to student inquiries in real time, no matter the time zone. Patti Juza, who runs the University of Colorado’s English-language center, detailed some of the odd-couple partnerships she had struck, working with everyone from the law school to state tourism officials to provide English instruction.
At the University of California at Davis, Joanna Regulska wants to ensure that students get a global experience wherever they turn – in their classes, in the residence halls, in internships and service learning. “Yes, it’s ambitious,” she conceded of the Global Education for All initiative, “but I think you have to be.”
The fact that this is, in part, a higher-ed problem means that people within higher ed may be able to fix it.
What’s your reaction? Comment here, find me on Twitter @karinfischer, or send me an email at latitudesnews@gmail.com. I’ll share your responses next week.
Nursing Discrimination
Several current and former students have accused Duke University’s School of Nursing of discriminating against them because of their race. At least two of those leveling the charges are international students, from China and the Philippines.
The controversy comes on the heels of another incident at Duke, in which a medical-school administrator admonished a group of international students to speak English, and one at the University of Maryland, where a professor singled out a number of Chinese students for allegedly cheating. Taken together, they paint a sobering picture of cultural insensitivity – or out-and-out discrimination.
Why do you think we continue to see instances like these in 2019? Or, better yet, tell me what your college is doing to help faculty and administrators acculturate to our increasingly global classrooms and campuses. Meanwhile, you can read about the Duke case here.
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Another Hit to Academic Freedom
A prominent law professor at Tsinghua University has been suspended and is under investigation after publishing a series of essays decrying President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian tendencies.
On Twitter, the moves against Xu Zhangrun prompted substantive discussion: Should Tsinghua be considered one of the world’s best universities if its faculty members don’t have the freedom to speak their minds?
What responsibility do colleges in the United States and elsewhere have to use their international ties to press for greater academic freedom at partner institutions?
I’m in the middle of writing about what rising nationalism in China means for its universities, so I was particularly interested in the comments of Teng Biao, a human-rights lawyer and activist, in this engaging ChinaFile discussion about the implications of silencing Xu. His argument: The latest moves to limit academic freedom aren’t an aberration.
Do you work in or on China? I’d be interested in your thoughts – send me a note at latitudesnews@gmail.com.
Around the Globe
The University of Cambridge will accept scores from the gao kao, joining a number of European and North American institutions that already use China’s national college-entrance exam in admissions.
Last spring, the Trump administration limited the length of visas for Chinese students and scholars studying and conducting research in certain sensitive fields. Now, some students who returned home over school vacation are finding themselves in limbo waiting for new visas.
When the International Studies Association decided to hold its annual meeting in Canada this year, organizers thought it would cut down on visa denials to conference participants. It hasn’t.
A Japanese university “lost track” of nearly 700 international students who are believed to be working illegally in the country.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison, which had the most graduates join the Peace Corps last year, ranks second in the number of volunteers since 1961. See how your alma mater stacked up.
The Association for Asian Studies released a statement expressing “strong concern” over China’s detention of Uighurs and other Muslims.
And finally…
Igor Chirkov is no fan of global academic rankings. They’re often misleading and don’t necessarily reveal much about the quality of education, he argues. So Chirkov, director of the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium, based at the University of California at Berkeley, decided to turn his rankings antipathy to good – by creating his own.
The Fortunate 500 University Ranking is based on the, er, highly-scientific principle of random selection. “Our number one university may not be the most academically rigorous; it might not be the most highly respected institution,” he promises. “It will, though, be the luckiest university to have been picked randomly out of our sampling of 2,000 institutions.”
I can’t totally hate on the outcome, however – my parents attended this year’s top institution, York University in Toronto.
Happy April Fool’s Day!
’Til next week – Karin
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