By Beth McMurtrie

Washington

In a speech largely focused on the Obama administration's domestic education priorities, Martha J. Kanter, U.S. under secretary of education, assured an audience of international educators in town this week for their annual conference that internationalization at all levels of education is a key priority of the administration.

However, during a question-and-answer session following her keynote speech for the Association of International Education Administrators, neither she nor Andre W. Lewis, who was appointed last fall to the new position of deputy assistant secretary for international and foreign-language education, could answer substantively many of the questions raised by members of the audience.

When asked how the administration planned to send 100,000 college students to study in China over the next four years, as President Obama pledged during a recent trip there, neither official seemed aware that such a commitment had been made.

Such gaffes notwithstanding, Ms. Kanter, a former community-college leader who is widely admired in higher-education circles, stressed that the administration is committed to internationalizing American education, from kindergarten through college. More elementary-school students should be studying a foreign language, she said, just as more college students should be spending time abroad.

'Not an Extra'

"International education cannot be seen as an add-on. It's not an extra in higher education or K-12," Ms. Kanter said. "The skills and knowledge acquired in international education are the same skills graduates need to succeed in a global economy."

She noted the commitment Mr. Obama made to expanding international exchange programs during a speech he gave in Cairo last June, and reminded the audience that Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and a community-college instructor, had spoken about the American higher-education model at a Unesco conference in Paris last July.

Ms. Kanter said the Department of Education is working closely with the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other organizations to support the development of further international-education opportunities, and told audience members that it was also their responsibility to get involved in discussions on how to internationalize the curriculum at elementary and secondary schools.

She also encouraged educators to supply the research that demonstrates the value of international-education programs. That, she said, will help the administration make the case for increased funds down the road.

"We need to do more to help the public understand what happens as a result of these investments," she said.

Difficulties Ahead

During the question-and-answer period, senior international-education administrators asked Ms. Kanter and Mr. Lewis about some challenges that have been vexing them. Those include difficulty in applying federal student aid to short-term study-abroad programs, problems with transferring credits between institutions in different countries, and disappointment that the president's recently unveiled budget for the 2011 fiscal year did not include additional money for the foreign-language and area-studies programs supported under Title VI of the Higher Education Act.

The Title VI programs are "chronically underfunded," said Gilbert Merkx, vice provost for international affairs at Duke University.

Ms. Kanter reminded the audience that the Education Department's proposed budget increase totaled 7 percent over all, even as other departments were likely to see their budgets cut.

As for the pledge to send 100,000 students to China, both Ms. Kanter and Mr. Lewis, who initially confused it with another pledge to send one million students abroad, sounded doubtful that it could happen anytime soon. Only about 13,000 American students now spend time in China each year.

"I don't see the funding in the budget" for next year, Ms. Kanter said. "We'd have to look at a special set-aside with the Department of State" for that to happen.