WIVA: Work Abroad and International Careers

Contributors: William Nolting, Martha Johnson, and Cheryl Matherly

Part II, Chapter 8
NAFSA's Guide to Education Abroad for Advisers and Administrators, Third Edition (2005)

Parts of this chapter

    Introduction
    History
    Participation Data
    Professional Associations and Standards
    Research
    Institutional Support
    Leveraging Study Abroad Experiences
    Resources


Education abroad programming will probably always be dominated by credit bearing study programs. But students learn in different ways and have many different needs, only some of which can be satisfied by educational programs that are purely academic in their structures, methods, and values. As an alternative to academic programs - or to expand their international experience - many students now seek opportunities abroad for work, internships and volunteering, in part because of their belief in the intrinsic educational value of such experiences, in part because of economic advantages they sometimes provide, and in part for career preparation. All of these motivations are valid and need to be supported by advisers and institutions.

The term education abroad includes both classroom instruction and experiential, beyond-the-classroom education. The expression "experiential education" has many meanings that encompass a vast array of approaches to learning outside the classroom - sometimes complementing classroom-based instruction - such as field trips, research and participant observation. This chapter focuses on experiential programs open to students and recent graduates for working, interning, volunteering and teaching abroad. The term work abroad is used here to mean immersion in an international work environment with the educational value of the experience itself as the primary purpose, whether for academic credit or not. Career-related overseas assignments through one's employer and permanent jobs abroad will not be covered in this chapter. By design, work abroad programs are temporary, lasting anywhere from a few weeks to two or three years, and they may or may not be related to specific career goals.



Programs for working abroad have a tradition paralleling that of study abroad. It would be a major study in itself to document the worldwide, centuries-old history of apprenticeships in the trades, arts and professions. Cluett in Frontiers (Winter 2002) cites examples such as Cicero travelling to Greece to improve his skills in rhetoric, and Peter the Great serving incognito as an apprentice in the shipyards of Amsterdam. The oldest program listed in the Institution of International Education's (IIE) education abroad guides is one for teaching abroad, Princeton-in-Asia, founded in 1898. Volunteer programs known as workcamps started after World War I to promote understanding among the youth of war-ravaged Europe. Reciprocal work-exchange programs were founded after World War II in hopes of fostering peace, including the Fulbright scholarship and teaching programs (1946) along with the International Association of Students in Economic and Business Management (AIESEC) and the International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience (IAESTE) (both in 1948) and CDS (1949) internship exchange programs. The idealism of the 1960s saw the inception of the Peace Corps (in 1961, inspired in part by Operation Crossroads Africa, founded in 1957), along with the BUNAC (1962) and Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) (1969) work abroad programs. Pioneers in international service learning along with classroom-based courses were Antioch College (1957) - which included a broad variety of work abroad experiences - and Goshen College (1968), which focused on volunteer service. This model was later emulated and widely propagated by the International Partnership for Service Learning (founded 1982) through conferences and publications. Steady expansion of study abroad - in numbers of both programs and participants - from the 1970s to the present has been accompanied by similar increases in work abroad. Since the 1990s this growth has been dramatic. Study abroad programs increasingly offered internships and service learning as an integral part of their curriculum. Nonsectarian volunteer abroad programs blossomed, often with a focus on social justice issues. Teach abroad programs developed to meet a worldwide demand for learning English. Overall, this is one of the fastest growing sectors in education abroad.

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How many students and recent graduates participate in programs for work, internships and volunteering abroad? These data fall largely outside the annual IIE Open Doors survey, since by definition it counts only students who receive credit at their home (U.S.) institution for study abroad, excluding participants in all other types of education abroad programs-even, ironically, recipients of such prestigious scholarships as Fulbright, Rhodes and Marshall. Open Doors first asked institutions to report for-credit internships only starting in 1998-99, yielding figures to date of only around 4 to 5 percent of total participants. Given that around 25 percent of all programs (i.e., 1,418 of the 5,695 total) listed in the 2003 edition of IIE's study-abroad guides offer internships, service learning, practical training or student teaching, the Open Doors figure probably represents underreporting. William Nolting has surveyed a dozen of the largest not-for-credit work abroad provider organizations since 1998, and they report over 18,000 participants annually (academic year 2000-01); the data will be made available on the Education Abroad network. The International Volunteer Programs Association (IVPA) surveyed 49 member organizations in 2000, which reported 15,000 participants annually; a figure twice as high - 33,000 - was reported by the authors of the book, How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Abroad (Collins, De Zerega, and Heckscher 2002), in their 2000 survey of a broader range of volunteer abroad programs. Adding the two smaller, conservative figures (with no double-counting of organizations) yields over 30,000 U.S. participants annually in educational, not-for-credit programs for work, internships and volunteering abroad. A truly comprehensive national survey could easily yield double that number. As a last word concerning numbers of participants, Open Doors also does not track foreign participants coming to the United States in work exchange programs, which are often reciprocal - this number is probably two to three times higher than the number of U.S. students going abroad, according to reciprocal program providers.

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The growth in this sector of education abroad has drawn the attention of professional associations within the past few years. Established associations such as NAFSA, the National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE) and the European Association for International Education (EAIE) have created standing committees, professional sections or interest groups devoted to issues in work, internship and volunteer abroad programs. A new professional association, the International Volunteer Programs Association (IVPA), is dedicated solely to issues related to volunteering and service learning abroad and lists standards for volunteer abroad programs on its Web site. Another, the Forum on Education Abroad, chose its name to indicate that its domain includes the full range of education abroad programs. Most of these associations have published statements of best practices for these types of programs, which can be expected to enter increasingly into the mainstream of professional discourse and practice within the field of education abroad. As one example, see the discussion of the NSEE's Principles of Good Practice of Experiential Education, by Lynne Montrose (Frontiers, Winter 2002), which also discusses theories supporting experiential education. NSEE's principles concern the following areas: intention, authenticity, planning, clarity, monitoring and assessment, reflection, evaluation, and acknowledgement.

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(For full citations, go to Resources section)

While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to cover research in depth, some general comments are possible. Both academic study abroad and (domestic) experiential education have rich literatures of theory and research. The literature for study abroad is documented online in the regularly updated Study Abroad Research Bibliography, by David Comp, Maureen Chao, and Henry Weaver hosted on the SAFETI Web site and which can be accessed from the Practice Resources section of NAFSA's Research/Scholarship network. For experiential education, the NSEE has published several large volumes of theory and research, although little of it has a specifically international focus. While these two literatures have much to offer, studies of internships, volunteering, teaching and working abroad remain relatively rare. The handful of such studies that appear in the online Study Abroad Research Bibliography are intriguing inasmuch as they generally agree in their findings that the benefits of such programs tend to be similar to those of study abroad, only amplified.

The Winter 2002 issue of Frontiers has the most comprehensive introduction to theories and research on international experiential education available. One article from that issue, both sophisticated in methodology and succinct, may stand here as representative of the results of most other studies. Michael Steinberg's article, titled "Involve Me and I Will Understand," presents the results of several large-scale surveys conducted by the Institute for the International Education of Students (IES) of participants in their internship programs (programs in which students also take courses), comparing this group with IES students who studied abroad but did not do an internship. According to Steinberg, "The (2002) survey suggested that these students who participated in field placements learned more in the experiential aspects (i.e., internships, field placements, and living situations) of the programs generally than they did in either program or university courses" (page 215). Those who had an internship reported much greater gains in foreign language (where applicable) - this was also verified by IES using standardized tests (page 214). Additionally, students who had internships reported greater gains in knowledge of the society, work-related knowledge, and personal knowledge (pages 217-218). IES also surveyed 3,400 alumni from the past fifty years. Steinberg sums up the results of the alumni survey as follows: "Students who participated in internships and field placements on IES programs were much more likely to say that study abroad ignited their interest in a career decision pursued after graduation" (than did those who studied abroad but did not participate in an internship or field placement). In light of this and other factors reported on by alumni, Steinberg concludes: "These findings suggest that experiential offerings have a significant and measurable long-term impact on those who have studied abroad" (page 218).

Several dozen additional studies focusing on participants in work, internship and volunteer abroad programs may be found in the Bibliography of Research on U.S. Students Abroad. Interestingly, early studies often included work abroad alongside study abroad as a valid educational experience. For example, Irwin Abrams (in articles from 1960-1980) assumed this broader perspective, as is evident in this quotation from his 1979 article entitled "The Impact of Antioch Education Abroad," reporting on the results of a survey of 670 alumni: 1) those who studied and worked abroad, 2) those who only studied abroad, and 3) a control group of 200 who did not go abroad:

The work experience appears to have had a most important influence. The Antioch Experience Abroad (AEA) alumni who did not work abroad were less likely than those who did to finish their B.A. degree. They were less likely to be able to use a foreign language and less inclined to note an influence of AEA on their graduate school and job choices... In these areas and others, the AEA alumni without job experience [while abroad] look much more like those who did not go on AEA at all then they do those who went on AEA but held jobs. [...] In general, then, what seems to be the case is the more immersion, the more satisfaction and the more impact. To put it differently, the more a program overseas encourages involvement with the host culture in a variety of roles, with that of worker in the society very important among them, the more we can expect to find enduring [changes in] attitudes and behavior (pages 184-185).

While the bulk of research over the past two decades has focused on purely academic study abroad, increasing numbers of studies on the outcomes for participants in work abroad programs have appeared. Service learning (volunteering abroad combined with academic coursework) has been the subject of studies by Pfinister (1972, 1979), Pyle (1981), Berry and Chisholm (1999). Also see articles in the Winter 2002 Frontiers by Lutterman-Aguilar and Gingerich; Peterson; and Annette. In the same issue, Honigsblum reports on a U.S.-sponsored study-internship program in Paris. Many studies have examined internships abroad in specific disciplines, such as business [Toncar and Cudmore (2000), Feldman et al. (1998), and Gonzalez (1993)], engineering [Grandin (1991) and Klahr and Ratti, (2000)], social work [Krajewski-Jaime et al. (1996)], and teaching abroad [Mahan and Stachowski, (1985 and 1990), Roose (2001), and Sussman (2002)]. Freyer and Day (1993) focus on the foreign language needs of MBA students doing internships in Spanish and French-speaking countries. The Fulbright programs, which include teaching opportunities, have been the subject of studies by Burn (1982) and the Office of Policy and Evaluation, U.S. State Department (2002). Work exchanges supported by European governments (e.g., CDS), were evaluated in a doctoral dissertation by Thot (1998). A study of participants in a U.S.-sponsored study-internship program in Australia was documented in a doctoral dissertation by Weiss (1998). Hannigan (2001) conducted perhaps the only study to date comparing participants in United States internships with participants in overseas internships. The conclusions of these studies are generally similar to those reported by Steinberg (2002) (see above).

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Although many institutions have been quick to incorporate service learning components into study abroad programs, relatively few have been proactive in establishing advising offices and support services that provide genuine encouragement and counseling for the full range of education abroad options. Interestingly, Harvard University, in a 2004 study of its curriculum, did endorse this broader view of education abroad:

Because of the important contribution that an international experience can play in the education of Harvard College students, we recommend that there be an expectation that all Harvard College students pursue a significant international experience during their time in the College, and that completion of such an experience be noted on the transcript. [...] We would expect that study abroad for a summer, term,or year, as well as international internships, independent research, volunteer work, or employment abroad would qualify, but that travel for tourism or recreation would not." (Page 40, "A Report on the Harvard College Curricular Review," April 2004)

Despite the fact that work abroad programs are accessible to students from any college or university, work abroad has been relatively neglected at many colleges and universities because it falls into the bureaucratic cracks. Traditional study abroad offices have refrained from promoting work abroad opportunities because they do not view such programming as their responsibility. Most define their domain as providing access to credit-granting academic opportunities. While it might seem logical for career-planning offices to handle work abroad advising, such offices frequently lack the international expertise needed to advise in this area. It would behoove both study abroad and career offices to familiarize themselves with these experiences, as the job market is beginning to demonstrate that such experience is good career preparation in an increasingly globalized economy. Setting aside questions of "turf," the bulk of this chapter is intended to introduce the education abroad adviser to the great number of work abroad options available to students and recent graduates, as well as to areas of possible cooperation with campus career offices. Please refer to the books and Web sites mentioned in this chapter for more in-depth information.

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Only the most proactive students will plan ahead to take advantage of career development opportunities while abroad, especially in the heady days in which they are preparing to leave the country. Yet, as discussed in this chapter, studying abroad is good career preparation and can provide some networking opportunities that may prove especially important to students considering international careers. Here are a few final tips about how students can leverage their time abroad that study abroad advisers might wish to incorporate into predeparture orientations and advising sessions. These tips, while especially useful for students who wish to work abroad, reflect good habits in general for students seeking summer and full-time jobs:

• Make a list of alumni living in the destination country. The alumni affairs or career services offices can provide these lists, and many overseas alumni organizations will have their own Web sites. Overseas alumni can be a useful resource for students to both learn more about particular career areas but also obtain useful job leads for full-time or summer opportunities.
  
• Keep a contacts notebook. Students should be encouraged to develop a record keeping system to track the names, address, and e-mails of people that they meet. It is common that a student may not realize the value of a contact until after they have returned home.
  
• If participating in a homestay, use every opportunity to talk with the host family about the local economy. The more knowledgeable a student becomes about the local market, the easier it will be for him or her to adopt a reasonable approach to finding a job.
  
• Pay attention to jobs listed in local newspapers and publications. These resources can be very useful for determining the employment sectors that have the greatest demand.
  
• If considering graduate school in the destination country, obtain application materials while abroad. Program representatives may be willing to meet with students to discuss particular degrees. Students who are considering applying for postgraduate scholarships such as the Fulbright should be strongly encouraged to research graduate schools.
  
• Find out how other people found their jobs. It is useful to remind students of the obvious. The best way to learn how to find a job overseas is to ask other Americans who have been successful with finding an international job how they did it. Alumni, of course, are good people to ask, but so are the other American expatriates whom they will meet in the course of studying abroad.
  
• Meet with the Career Center staff before leaving the country. The Career Services staff can advise students about how to manage the job, internship and graduate school deadlines that will come due while they are out of the country. Additionally, a career counselor can help students devise a job search strategy to take advantage of contacts they make while abroad and as well as how to best market their experiences when they return.
  
• Keep in contact with useful contacts. E-mail makes it very easy for students to periodically touch base with the interesting people they met while abroad in order to keep alive their network.

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Resources

For the Resources included in this chapter, visit the University of Michigan Web site.

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Visit the WIVA: Work, Internships, and Volunteering Abroad Practice Resource page for more information about work abroad and international careers.


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