Whole World Study: Academic Advising & Study in Uncommon Destinations

Seeking education abroad in distant and exotic lands has a distinguished tradition that dates back to at least the seventh century, when some European students undertook dangerous sea voyages to pursue study and training in Irish monasteries. Since that time, the communication and transport revolutions have made the journey easier and the choice of destination much broader. Today, thanks to the forces of economic globalization, our students are often as familiar with India's "Bollywood" movies, Jamaican music trends and Senegalese soccer stars as they were with their own high school sports team. And what until quite recently seemed exotic or unattainable (think sushi dinners in middle America) has now become commonplace–including study in destinations abroad that once attracted very few students.
Twenty years ago, fewer than 30,000 U.S. students participated in study abroad, and few opted for destinations outside a small number of western European countries. In 1999-2000, the last year for which we have national enrollment data, more than 140,000 U.S. students studied abroad. During the intervening years, destinations once regarded as exotic have come to attract large student populations–China, Japan, Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and more–and some twenty percent of U.S. students going abroad now participate in programs in such "nontraditional" destinations.
Given the growing number of study abroad destinations, and the increasing student interest in sites once considered only rarely, if at all, how can faculty advisers help students make study abroad choices that are educationally appropriate? And given that four-fifths of U.S. students still study in traditional locations, how can faculty advisers help still more students consider study in a nontraditional site?

Make the Curricular Connection

Offering a strong set of area studies courses that focus on the non-Western world is the best way to encourage and sustain student interest in studying in the developing world. Yet even without great faculty depth in specific areas or languages, a strong case can be made for the value of study in less common destinations. Looking at options from a "whole world" perspective gives enriching options for students from every disciplinary background:

Field-based research options in developing world locations for students of the social sciences;
Ethnomusicology, religious dance, and indigenous art forms such as Balinese shadow puppetry and African fiber arts for students in the humanities;
Enhanced language skills and experience with low-income populations for pre-medical students who hope to work in immigrant communities of the United States;
Opportunities for students of European languages such as French, Spanish, Dutch, or Portuguese to observe post-colonial development and emerging democracies.

Studying abroad can give one a sense of perspective on one's own society, as, for example, when the study of South Africa's emerging democracy sheds light on issues of racial tension in the US, or when the exploration of micro-lending practices in India or Ecuador offers workable grass-roots applications to endemic inner-city poverty in industrialized nations.
The specific programs that are available and approved for your students' participation will vary depending upon your institution. The International Programs or Study Abroad Office on your campus and some of your faculty colleagues will often prove to be the best resources for addressing vexing issues of accreditation and program quality, but three online resources bear mentioning for their ease of use and quality of offerings:

IIEPassport
The Institute for International Education, widely-known as the non-profit entity which administers the Fulbright Scholars program, offers a searchable database (IIEPassport) of semester, year and short-term study abroad options. Searches can be made both by individual country and by educational discipline.
Worldstudy
The U.S. government has recently put together a Web site called Worldstudy, in conjunction with the National Security Education Program (NSEP) scholarship programs for graduate and undergraduate study abroad in non-Western countries. It includes region-specific program listings accumulated by scholarly societies such as the Association for Asian Studies and LANIC.
The Yahoo! Internet Directory of Higher Education
Yahoo! offers a country index to colleges and universities around the world. Despite a regrettable lack of academic oversight, which sometimes leads to a preponderance of language school entries, it remains a vital resource for identifying direct enroll options in a less-traveled parts of the globe. Universities which are reaching out to students in other nations will include copious information about short-term (study abroad) admissions, either under their International Office heading or under International Admissions.

Understanding the Educational Options

The study abroad programs that are available and approved for your students' participation will of course depend upon your institution's policies regarding eligibility, participation, and the transfer of academic credit from other institutions. We have in recent years witnessed a proliferation in the variety and number of study abroad programs, and your institution is likely to have a review and approval process to help guide the selection and approval of new programs. The first step to understanding the educational options is to be aware of the programs available and the policies that guide student participation. Two very popular models for study abroad programs are the field studies model and the university model.

The Field Studies Model

As alluded to above, many of the programs now available in countries in the developing world seek to make use of a country's unique natural or cultural resources to offer a field research experience to advanced undergraduates in the environmental or social sciences. The typical curriculum combines language instruction and topics courses on the history, politics, culture and/or environment of a given country with a faculty-directed capstone research project on a topic related to an individual student's interests and disciplinary training. While a field studies program does involve regularly taught, and even rigorous, coursework, it does not typically involve enrollment in traditional university classes in the host country.
A short list of the best-known programs which specialize in this pedagogical approach would include the School for International Training (SIT), Lexia International, HECUA, Augsburg College, the School for Field Studies (SFS), The University of Minnesota's Minnesota Studies in International Development (MSID) programs, Duke University's Organization for Tropical Studies OTS), as well as a number of the programs developed through the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) and Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) consortia. (There are other sponsors which favor experiential approaches, and no slight is intended to any institution offering excellent programs which has not been mentioned in this list.) The best field-studies programs, which rely on homestays and employ host country personnel to assist students in completing their field projects, aim to immerse students in the local culture. This option is not appropriate for all students or institutions.

University Study

Some students are better-suited to taking courses at a host-country university. This may be done either via an exchange agreement which their home university sets up, through a US program based at an overseas university, or, increasingly, by applying to an overseas university which works directly with North American students. The World Study site mentioned above is the best source of information on such opportunities; it focuses exclusively on opportunities outside Western Europe and Australia, and includes useful articles for students and parents.

Acknowledge Your Students' Career and Personal Goals

Many students, particularly in the sciences or pre-professional fields, may be interested in study abroad but fearful of delaying graduation or appearing less than serious about their career goals. Faculty can support such students by acknowledging the importance of career planning for students in many professional and technical fields. We can also help them understand the advantages of studying abroad in advancing career opportunities in such fields. Thus, a student in Health Sciences might benefit from working with a non-governmental agency specializing in health issues, while a Civil Engineering student might be advised to participate in a program that provided him or her with an opportunity to do an internship with a firm constructing roads in an underdeveloped country. Study abroad in developing world locations can in fact foster job skills that employers increasingly value:

the ability to imagine, analyze, and creatively address the potential of local economies and cultures;
a knowledge of commercial, technical, and cultural developments in a variety of locales;
an awareness of key leaders and the ability to engage such leaders in useful dialogue;
an understanding of local customs and negotiating strategies;
a facility in English and at least one other major language, coupled with a facility with computers;
technical skills in business, law, public affairs, and/or technology, coupled with an awareness about the need to adapt such skills within challenging cultural environments (IIE, 1997).

The Career Advisers section of this guide provides additional information about ways to support student efforts to combine professional goals with whole world study abroad opportunities. Among those resources, faculty from scientific and technical fields (including agriculture, mathematics, and architecture) will especially want to become acquainted with the International Association for Exchange of Students for Technical Experience (IAESTE), founded in 1948 to offer substantive paid internship opportunities to students in technical fields.

Address Perceived Barriers

Some of your students, while they may be interested in the music or history of nontraditional destinations, may be reluctant to study there because of misconceptions about these locations. Three perceived barriers often arise with respect to non-Western countries:

The Presumed Language Barrier
Students often worry that they will have to take all their classes in Czech, Korean or Swahili if they study in an unusual destination when, in fact, increasing numbers of universities offer at least part of their curriculum in English. You may want to remind your students that the higher education systems of many post-colonial nations are offered either entirely in English, or in Spanish or French, the two most commonly-taught foreign languages in the United States. Earlier missionary efforts in China and some other Asian countries led to the founding of colleges dedicated to preparing host nationals for the ministry; a number of these institutions now also offer a full curriculum in English.

A Perceived Lack of Safety
As recent events in New York and Washington, DC, have reminded us, studying in the United States does not necessarily provide a safer environment than studying in a developing country. Most U.S. institutions in fact now devote considerable resources to providing for student health, safety, and security abroad, and it is safe to say that more energy is expended on providing for such needs at programs in the developing world than anywhere else. An excellent resource in this regard can be found in this guide under Students and Parents resources, especially the guidelines on safety and responsibility. These guidelines, which have been jointly developed by many of the leading organizations in international education exchange, now provide a "best practices" standard for the field of study abroad.
As a faculty adviser, you will be well advised to work closely with your study abroad office so that you can feel confident that that your institution's list of recommended programs has a strong record of student safety. You may also want to recommend that students familiarize themselves with the health and safety checklists in two online projects which have arisen out of this interorganizational collaboration on student safety:
- The Student Handbook on Study Abroad
- The Safety Abroad Handbook for Students developed as part of a FIPSE project at the University of Southern California.

The Perceived Cost Barrier
Contrary to student perception, study abroad in non-Western destinations does not, for the most part, cost more than study in Europe or Australia. The higher transportation costs of getting to the southern hemisphere, for example, are more than counterbalanced in most cases by the significant drop in cost of living. Nonetheless, particularly for students from community colleges or state colleges, the cost of any study abroad program may be a significant debt to consider taking on. Work abroad programs, such as those listed through Transitions Abroad or direct-exchange agreements with an overseas partner are perhaps the best low-cost options; but it is also wise to let students know that federal financial aid is fully applicable to approved study abroad programs.
In addition to regular aid funds, the federal government operates two significant scholarship competitions in support of undergraduate study abroad: the David L. Boren Scholarships of the National Security Education Program, which provide up to $10,000 for a semester abroad, and which are targeted specifically to students studying in the non-Western world; and the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarships, which provide up to $5,000, and are earmarked specifically for needy students who have been recipients of Pell grants in past semesters.