What We Heard From Stakeholders

Participants in the Agenda Project dialogue sessions articulated often and persuasively the many serious international education challenges that American postsecondary education faces. They recognize that an excellent foundation for the internationalization of postsecondary education institutions, curricula, faculty, and students exists. Yet they acknowledge that international education has received inadequate attention and resources in our nation's colleges and universities, our K-12 schools, our state governments, our federal government, and our businesses. They also recognize that we are only one part of a larger world and that the increasingly universal American postsecondary education system, with its diversity of learners, providers, locations, outcomes, credentials, and funders, is integrally interconnected with this world.

NATIONAL AGENDA OPPORTUNITIES

The primary challenges that the Agenda Project dialogue participants identified include:

1. In American postsecondary education, international education generally is separated from other disciplines, from teacher education and other graduate and professional programs, and from the core elements of the undergraduate arts and sciences curricula. In today’s global environment, international education must be more thoroughly integrated throughout the postsecondary curricula.

2. The lack of systematic attention to international education in many postsecondary institutions and the scarcity of effective K-16 partnerships have fostered a similar lack of attention to international education in grades K-12. Students must begin preparing for the global economy at the earliest levels.

3. Support by government, postsecondary institutions, and the private sector for the production and dissemination of international expertise and research is limited and piecemeal. At the state and national levels, there is a general lack of effective international education and policy advocacy by, and collaboration among, the many institutions and organizations that have a stake in postsecondary education.

4. Many factors discourage U.S. undergraduate and graduate student education and research abroad. These factors include state government postsecondary education program and funding policies, postsecondary institutions' curricula and degree requirements, faculty expectations for timely student progression, and uncertain employment and career benefits from international study.

5. The United States is faced with increasing competition in educating students from other countries. They are mounting vigorous recruitment campaigns to compete for international students. The visa issue might be contributing to this problem and requires further study.

6. U.S. and foreign student opportunities for study abroad often fail to meet the needs of diverse student learners (for example, part-time students, racial and ethnic minorities, disabled students) and to recognize the benefits of participation by a more diverse group of institutions (for example, U.S. community colleges, for-profit institutions).

7. Unnecessary government regulatory and procedural barriers discourage international students from studying in the United States, U.S. students from studying abroad, and institutions worldwide from providing quality education opportunities for American students both in the U.S. and abroad.

8. There is a lack of knowledge about OPE international education "lessons learned" and "best practices" in other OPE programs, in other U.S. Department of Education offices, in other Executive Branch departments, in states, and among postsecondary education institutions.

These challenges require that OPE articulate and implement, working collaboratively with the postsecondary education community, a strategic vision. That vision should encompass critically important international education goals for American postsecondary education, including: to produce and use U.S. international experts and research to meet national strategic needs; to increase and strengthen postsecondary education linkages with K-12 education systems, business, media, state and local governments, and other sectors; and to educate foreign nationals in diverse U.S. postsecondary education institutions to foster these individuals' better understanding of American systems and institutions.

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