Academics expand on an international scale

Considered one of the driving forces of the general globalization phenomenon, the internationalization of academic institutions has become a point of interest over the past decade. As the demand for globally proficient employees increases, Boston College, like the vast majority of universities across the United States, has repeatedly emphasized its commitment to international education.

One of BC's seven strategic goals, emerging out of the University's Institutional Master Plan, is to become "a significant intellectual and cultural crossroads by leveraging Boston College's international resources..." However, as many universities are discovering, there exists no single framework for successful internationalization. While BC has previously relied on its recognized abroad programs to prepare its students for global leadership, offering overseas curriculums is no longer enough. International exposure, many scholars say, also includes recruiting international students, building stronger global faculty exchanges, and reexamining the core curriculum.

Still, director of the Office of International Programs, Bernd Widdig, identifies the study-abroad program as the most advanced part of BC's international strategy. With approximately 40 percent of students studying overseas at some point in their academic career, BC is recognized as one of the premier study-abroad institutions in the nation. In 2005-2006, 996 undergraduates studied abroad, ranking BC 40th among schools with the most study-abroad scholars in the country, according to the Institute of International Education.

Ranked first in the Institute's 2007 Open Doors Report is New York University, which recently announced plans to establish a comprehensive liberal arts campus in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. NYU Abu Dhabi - set to open in 2010 - represents one of the more large-scale attempts to internationalize. Nevertheless, Widdig said, "These campuses, or island programs, are quite controversial … there are big debates about how much you actually learn about another culture while there."

Widdig, who served as the director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative before coming to BC, believes that these global campuses can defeat the point of studying overseas. "What is the purpose of going abroad?" Widdig asked. "To replicate a BC campus somewhere else? To be only around other BC students and taught by BC faculty?" While he noted that island programs offer some advantages, Widdig said the possibility of students interacting with other cultures is actually more limited in these settings. "At BC, however, we have the privilege of being able to offer all different types of programs that allow students to learn from many traditional and non-traditional countries," he said.

Unfortunately, not every student at BC can afford the privilege of learning from these countries. While the University does offer financial aid, many students cannot pay for the additional expenses of international travel. Some wonder how the school will achieve comprehensive internationalization if a great proportion of its students are isolated from the most seminal part of the strategy.

"We need to remove the financial barrier," Widdig said, and adding that the Office of International Programs needs more funding to do so. "We have more and more students who want to go on our programs and we need to have a budget for them." In addition, the deteriorating value of the U.S. dollar places additional strain on the program. "Within the last few months, the dollar lost about 15 percent of its value," Widdig noted, "which means we have 15 percent less budget."

While in the past BC has depended on abroad programs as its primary multi-cultural resource, the era of international competitiveness requires the University to examine the global atmosphere of its own campus.

The international population at BC, composed of undergraduate, graduate, and exchange students, as well as faculty and research scholars, is essential to the University's commitment to internationalization.

Chinese graduate student Isabel Gao, LSOE '08, said, "In order to achieve [globalization] BC must commit itself to expanding its international demographic."

In the 2006-2007 academic year, the international population at BC consisted of 1,132 individuals.

The greatest proportion of that total came from 475 graduate students, who made up 41 percent of the entire international populace.

Three-hundred and one undergraduate students represented 27 percent of the group, while 134 faculty and research scholars accounted for 12 percent of the total.

Director of the Office of International Students and Scholars Adrienne Nussbaum said the statistics for the 2007-2008 academic year are very similar, if not identical in some areas.

While there has been an increase in the BC international population over the past decade, much of this growth is attributed to students on the graduate level. While many concur that BC has done an adequate job in recruiting international graduate students, the undergraduate numbers remain considerably low.

"At the undergraduate level, we are a little behind the times," Nussbaum said. Presently, only about 2 percent of the undergraduate population resides in a foreign country.

In 2005, international students at Harvard represented nearly 9 percent of the undergraduate population. At the University of Pennsylvania, that figure reached 11 percent that year.

"Our undergraduate numbers are very low. They're too low," said Nussbaum, who attributes this deficiency to problems with recruiting international students. "In recent years, BC has started to do international recruiting, but they need to do a lot more." Currently, BC does not offer international students any financial aid at the undergraduate level, with the exception of athletic scholarships. "It's quite simple, if you don't have the money, you can't come to BC," Nussbaum said. "If BC wants to increase the number of undergraduate international students, which they really should, then they need to offer financial aid to these students."