Education Abroad - Emerging Barriers & Opportunities for Underrepresented Students

July 15 | 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. EDT

In this Open Meeting hosted by the Education Abroad Knowledge Community's Diversity and Inclusion and Financing Education Abroad subcommittees, discussion will center on the financial impacts on underrepresented students related to education abroad. Like many crisis management situations, the COVID-19 pandemic raised feelings of uncertainty and fear among communities, locally and abroad.

While the virus is not particularly selective in who it infects, evidence in the United States shows low-income communities are more likely to be exposed. Consequently, the economic fallout is more pronounced within low-income communities, shining a spotlight of the underlying wealth inequalities in the United States, inequities that fall along lines of race, gender, and immigration statuses. For the field of higher education, where many institutions have been actively implementing diversity and inclusion initiatives to increase access to education abroad, the economic fallout will most likely to affect those initiatives.

Meeting Objectives

• Reflect on how recent events have added an additional barrier to education abroad programs for diverse and low-income communities
• Leverage the expertise and experiences of the network to brainstorm what we can do to support these students