Inequalities in Study Abroad and Student Mobility

Navigating Challenges and Future Directions

Suzan Kommers, Krishna Bista, Suzan Kommers, Krishna Bista

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000246117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Multicultural Education

Bringing together a range of contributions from diverse international scholars, this edited volume explores issues of inequality in student mobility to consider how schools, universities, and colleges can ensure equitable access to international study and exchange.

Featuring evidence-based accounts of students' experiences and exploring opportunities for study abroad in school and university contexts, Inequalities in Study Abroad and Student Mobility analyses how pedagogy and student support services can be designed to accommodate linguistic, cultural, ethnic, and socio-economic differences. Chapters foreground issues of access and opportunity and offer unique insights to inform institutional policy in developing more effective, inclusive, and equitable ways to internationalize exchange and study abroad programs and initiatives for all.

This timely volume will benefit researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of international and comparative education, as well as educators and school leaders working within secondary and higher education settings concerned with multicultural education.

1 Study Abroad and Student Mobility

From Educational Experience to Emerging Enterprise

Suzan Kommers and Krishna Bista

We live in a globalizing world. That means that all of us, consciously or not, depend on each other. Whatever we do or refrain from doing affects the lives of people who live in places we’ll never visit.

– Zygmunt Bauman

Introduction

Global challenges such as climate change, the refugee crisis, and the global spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) create anxiety and disruption in human thoughts and institutions. At the same time, it offers windows to rethink our values, behaviors, and systems. As Bauman (2001) illustrated, the world is interconnected, meaning that the decisions by one person on one side of the world can greatly impact people on the other side of the planet. We need political support for global solutions that can effectively address today’s global challenges. People thereby need to feel a sense of cohesion and shared responsibility that goes beyond national boundaries (Deardorff, 2006; Paige, Fry, Stallman, Josić, & Jon, 2009).

One of the common ways higher education institutions try to provide students with the opportunity to encounter different worldviews is by encouraging them to do a part of their undergraduate degree in a foreign country (Paige et al., 2009; Take & Shoraku, 2018). Study abroad was historically described as an educational experience that addresses global issues by making students more aware of their global responsibilities and encouraging them to contribute to a more humane world (Reilly & Senders, 2009). Over the past decades, however, the focus of study abroad and student mobility has shifted from mostly an educational experience to an emerging enterprise. In this introductory chapter of the book, we discuss what the commercialization of study abroad meant for the equity in study abroad and student mobility. Is the business model of international higher education gradually pulling away from the goal it was meant to serve? How can scholars, policymakers, and educational practitioners ensure that study abroad is not reinforcing the social inequality present in societies and the world?

Commercialization of Study Abroad

Colleges and universities have increasingly started outsourcing study abroad and exchange programs to third-party vendors and private businesses, often promoting the tourism element over the educational purpose (Pipitone, 2018). Glossy posters of exotic locations try to convince students to study abroad, encounter new people, places, and languages at a destination of their choice. Offering study abroad as a packaged experience often means that this experience is stripped of the educational context and has little preparation and few reintegration programs upon return (Bolen, 2001; Weinberg, 2007). While such an abroad experience may be attractive to students, just sending students to a location abroad is not sufficient for reaching the learning goals often envisioned (Pedersen, 2010). It is mostly the educational guidance and mentoring that helps students recognize the variety and complexity in intercultural encounters (Holmes, Bavieri, & Ganassin, 2015), making abroad meaningful to students’ future lives and careers (Doyle et al., 2010). Without proper educational guidance, students often remain unaware of what they have learned and fail to apply their experiences in their work (Messelink, Van Maele, & Spencer-Oatey, 2015).

Apart from study abroad being stripped of its educational context, the commercialization has impacted the goal the abroad experience is argued to serve. Study abroad has been marketed as a way for students to gain a competitive edge in the job market (Bolen, 2001). The extra costs involved with studying abroad in terms of program fees, visa applications, travel, and living are often on top of students’ already expensive education and would therefore need to be ‘worth it’. Indeed, students reported earning a higher salary as a key motivating factor for them to study abroad (Punteney, 2016). Also, in national policies, the main rationale for sending students abroad is for them to develop new skills and knowledge that would help the workforce (Helms, Brajkovic, & Rumbley, 2016). With the growing emphasis on the effect of study abroad on students’ labor market success, there is a growing body of literature addressing the effect of study abroad on students’ career outcomes (Salisbury, An, & Pascarella, 2013; Waibel, Rüger, Ette, & Sauer, 2017).

The effect of study abroad on career outcomes is often described in terms of indirect effects.

Research has indicated study abroad allows students to develop intercultural competency and provides them with the experience to communicate effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations (Lokkesmoe, Kuchinke, & Ardichvili, 2016; Pedersen, 2010; Peng, Dyne, & Oh, 2015; Salisbury et al., 2013; Williams, 2005). This, in turn, would make students more successful in their later careers. Moreover, study abroad is suggested to relate to students’ career outcomes indirectly through the social and cultural capital such experience results in. Employers recognized the importance of cross-cultural understanding in an increasingly global workforce (Crossman & Clarke, 2010; Molony, Sowter, & Potts, 2011) and believed that students who gained international experiences through study abroad were superior in professionally relevant competencies (Teichler & Janson, 2007). While study abroad is often assumed to benefit students’ later careers, research shows this effect may be more nuanced. Labor market returns vary according to factors such as the level of study, the type of mobility, and prestige hierarchies of the host country (Van Mol, Caarls & Souto-Otero, 2020).

The often-assumed effect of study abroad on career success is problematic for two reasons. First, the studies finding an effect of study abroad on career success such as job income often do not account sufficiently for the selection effect of only certain students going abroad, potentially making the effect a result of pre-existing social inequalities (Waibel et al., 2017). Second, in case study abroad actually positively impact students’ careers, this means that students who do not have equal opportunities to participate in study abroad, miss out on the enhanced educational opportunities, meaning that study abroad creates inequitable chances for upward social mobility. In sum, the shift of study abroad from a learning experience to an enterprise and way to gain upward social mobility signifies the importance of examining study abroad practices in terms of equity, accessibility, and socioeconomic inequality.

Inequality in Study Abroad Opportunities

Studying abroad requires financial, social, and cultural resources, making it much harder for students of low socioeconomic status to participate (Dessoff, 2006; Lörz, Netz, & Quast, 2016; Salisbury, Paulsen, & Pascarella, 2011). The inequality in study abroad opportunities means that some students are shut out of key learning experiences. Moreover, with the increasing consensus that study abroad gives students an advantage on the job market, inequitable opportunities to study abroad can create inequity in later career outcomes. With mostly students from higher socioeconomic status going abroad, study abroad might reinforce existing social inequality rather than making the world more compassionate and socially just. The inequalities in study abroad opportunities become apparent upon reviewing the federal policies on study abroad, which show that some students – primarily already disadvantaged students – miss out on the learning and career advantages.

The United States has been described as an example of a country that has very little regulation in terms of outgoing student mobility. This provides a prime example showing that by not providing any regulations and financial support, study abroad will only be accessible to the elite. The U.S. Department of Education has had almost no involvement with the campus internationalization initiatives (e.g. study abroad, transnational research collaboration) at American colleges and universities. There are limited opportunities for students and faculty to receive student aid/travel support, to support their research and collaboration, and to prioritize strategic goals and policies in relation to the national interest (Ruther, 2014; Trilokekar, 2015). Even though higher education institutions have promoted study abroad and internationalization in their mission and vision statements, they often did not translate this into practical steps and equivalent federal funding (Ruther, 2014). The lack of federal funding for study abroad resulted in a lack of a strategic approach in the regulation and organization of outgoing student mobility (de Wit, 2002). The extra expenses required from students at most institutions in the U.S. create a heavy financial burden on the student, which in many cases, makes study abroad unaffordable. The lack of federal funding strategies on study abroad can subsequently create large disparities in study abroad opportunities.

Conversations about study abroad have mainly focused on study abroad in response to the demands of changing economic and occupational structures. However, to fully address study abroad and student mobility, there needs to be a better understanding of the inequity in educational and occupational outcomes of study abroad and how such inequities might make study abroad a reproducer of social inequality. Only by examining how study abroad and student mobility reinforces social stratification, research can work towards finding ways to make internationalization practices like study abroad more effective and more socially just (George Mwangi et al., 2018). What are alternatives to study abroad programs that exceed the primacy of local face-to-face lecturing and tutoring? Will blended distance education and collaborative online international learning overrule traditional student mobility? These questions are touched in this book to help us proceed further in the 21st century.

Organization of the Book

Each chapter of the book provides a broad range of inequality issues and thereby responds to the growing need for insights into how to increase equity in study abroad and student mobility. The chapters presented in this book will bring a fresh perspective on how our current internationalization efforts are serving some students while disadvantaging others. The entire book is divided into three parts.

The first section of the book includes four chapters that discuss how equity issues in international student mobility play out on a global scale. In Chapter 2, Adinda van Gaalen provides an overview of the undesired consequences of internationalization of higher education following the People, Planet, Prosperity (3P) values framework of the United Nations. Hatice Altun addresses a specific aspect of the global power dynamic by exploring the social and educational trajectories of ‘students of the new global elite’ in an intercultural setting in Chapter 3. Lien Pham describes the challenges of social equity in international education within Vietnam specifically in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, Kayoko Enomoto, Richard Warner, and Julia Miller describe Australian students’ learning experience while on Japanese exchange to discuss the balance between institutional and individual students’ responsibilities to prepare students embarking on study abroad.

The second section of the book addresses the inequality in students’ opportunities to gain international experiences. The first two chapters in this part focus on inequality in internationalization in secondary education. In Chapter 6, Manca Sustarsic and Baoyan Cheng explore equity issues in secondary school student mobility by discussing how social and cultural capital gets transmitted through merit-based exchange programs. In Chapter 7, Yuko Ida examines how the promotion of International Baccalaureate education in Japan resulted in an increase in inequality in the educational system. Moving the focus to inequality in students’ opportunities to gain international experiences in postsecondary education, in Chapter 8, Melissa Whatley describes how postsecondary institutions relate to students’ abroad going, particularly in terms of their location and the duration of their time abroad.

The final section of the book addresses the question of how to make study abroad more inclusive by promoting diversity and exploring alternatives to study abroad. In Chapter 9, Chris Johnstone provides an overview of the recent literature on inclusive internationalization, comparing the U.S. and European policy and practice. In Chapter 10, Melissa Mace reviews the literature around aspects of internationalization at home and offers recommendations for a global education context that permeates all areas of the student experience. In Chapter 11, Dawn Joseph and Richard Johnson examine an example of an alternative to study abroad, discussing benefits and challenges in relation to the value of promoting diversity through international partnerships. Finally, Sharon Glazer presents a quick guide on how to develop virtually abroad programs in Chapter 12.

Study Abroad and Student Mobility: It’s Time ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Editors
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• List of Contributors
• 1 Study Abroad and Student Mobility: From Educational Experience to Emerging Enterprise
• Part I How Do Equity Issues in International Student Mobility Play Out on a Global Scale?
• Part II Inequality in Students’ Opportunities to Gain International Experiences
• Part III Promoting Diversity and Exploring Alternatives to Study Abroad
• Index