There is a tremendous amount of discussion in administrative circles, and in higher education more generally, about the rise of the so-called “global university” and the need for institutions to develop a significant presence in the world beyond the United States. This discussion often centers on countries like China and India, where a growing, education-hungry population and rapidly developing economies promise great opportunities for American institutions that manage to create and maintain a strong presence in those places.
At my previous institution, we had a large program in Singapore, which is, conveniently enough, a kind of cultural crossroads between China and India. We had several hundred students from the region enrolled, and the program was highly successful academically and financially for the university.
The challenge of such a program lies in its management. We had a more-or-less constant flow of faculty members traveling between the United States and Singapore, which is, literally, half-way around the world. Other senior administrators and I traveled to Singapore less often, but quite regularly — I went five times in less than three years. The costs of these trips both financially and in terms of faculty and administrative time, not to mention the appalling jet-lag that comes from a 13-hour time difference, were extremely high.
In addition, we had to navigate complex cultural issues. Singapore is a highly aggressive capitalist culture (much more aggressive than that of the U.S.), and our colleagues there operated under very different assumptions — some better than ours and some not — about the way things ought to work in an educational program. Communication across these assumptions was an interesting and ongoing challenge.
If the pundits are right, though, despite such challenges, more institutions, even small ones like mine, will need to develop such programs to survive and thrive in the future. Electronic communication, easy travel, and the “flat world” phenomenon popularized by Thomas Friedman make it likely that institutions with a global presence will do much better than those without.
The implications for faculty hiring and faculty life are plain. New faculty members, even at small, remote, teaching-oriented institutions, are going to end up traveling the world to teach, do research, and build networks. Their ability and willingness to do so is going to be part of more hiring discussions — for example, at my previous institution, travel to Singapore was often a given in job descriptions. The globalization of education is happening, and faculty members will go to places they never dreamed of as part of that process. Candidates need to be ready to think about how they might navigate in such a world.
Follow On Hiring through your favorite RSS reader:
4 Responses to The Challenges of International Programs
samueloulrey - December 10, 2009 at 1:00 pm
It sounds evil, to me. US tax-victims should not be forced to subsidize the transfer of valuable and strategic knowledge from the USA to other countries. We should not be paying faculty salaries or benefits for such programs. We should not be subsidizing foreign students while turning our backs on US citizens. Nor should we be hiring foreign teaching assistants and professors who can’t communicate clearly to US students, but, instead, hamper learning.
bghansel - December 10, 2009 at 1:18 pm
It sounds as if the programs are expensive to run, but still provide income to the university, if I’m reading this correctly, so that’s positive from the bottom line.The cultural issues are challenging, but also exciting and offer real opportunities for mutual learning if faculty on both sides build this in as part of their intention.
laoshi - December 11, 2009 at 10:54 pm
@samueloulrey: English is one of Singapore and India’s official languages, and taught to Chinese starting in early primary school. English is not the official language of the United States, though used by many. The propensity of “evil” foreigners to “communicate clearly to US students” is very high indeed. As you type your isolationist response, be thankful to the Chinese who made your keyboard and the Indians who provide you 24/7/365 technical support.We can certainly learn a lot from more aggressive capitalist cultures, perhaps enough to reverse the socialist-fascist economic collapse in our once good ol’ US of A. The reality is that other western countries are beating us to the punch. China has significant investment by Australian institutions, and Taiwan has lots of Canadian investment, for example. Evans is right to point out the challenge of overcoming assumptions. This is the key to intercultural understanding.One of the assumptions is that made by the first respondent, that one country can somehow survive without being connected to the world. That kind of ignorance gets us nowhere. The world may not be as flat as Friedman posits, but is increasingly more interconnected, particularly amongst North America, South and East Asia, and Europe. Isolationism will kill our country even quicker than the current Administration intends.
cherilangdell - December 17, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Have you seen “Up in the Air” yet? Since such educational programs, with frequent travel to the ends of the earth, are inordinately expensive to run, it may be that the need to re-examine traveling to the centers as opposed to teleconferencing. While a decade ago the teleconferencing or video-conferencing software was comparatively primitive, today it is state of the art. The other person seems to be sitting opposite one. It is arguable that it makes sense NOT to send a (complaining?) professor back and forth to Singapore but rather to have him or her meet with staff and other administrators at the center regularly, even once a week, and have one director on-site, whose responsibility is THAT center. This local director, also a professor at the university–perhaps an emeritus with a wanderlust, her wits about her and spring in her step?–would be completely in charge of that site, yet of course ultimately answerable to the university she represents. While the film (don’t want to give too much away here) doesn’t give T1 lines an unqualified endorsement over the old-fashioned approach of lots of expensive travel, it makes the point that in fact it would be possible to run a remote site the way I’ve suggested; and what’s most important, FAR more cost effective. In these lean years, when adjunct professor with credentials equal to or better than those of tenured professors NOT getting the full time positions they endured graduate school to acquire and with education in the classroom often taking the hit when universities are economizing, I believe your article makes a good case for cutting the travel budgets of these high cost international programs. I would not have argued that before the recent Depression–indeed I have a PhD in comparative literature and I and my daughter have benefited from international programs greatly ourselves (I do not question their importance); but today I believe that every university should economize on elitist travel for already well-paid site administrators. Most business can be conducted via teleconferences today, given the technology now available. Consider this. I know International Program Directors usually love to travel, despite the semblance of complaining, but today that way of life is truly becoming extinct, impractical and not necessarily in any university’s economic best interest. After all, why can’t the local director handle most everything that comes up? It is a fiction of past–this idea that International Program Directors HAVE to visit their outposts five times a year? (Helas, poor guy!) Today I believe every available dollar should be spent on classroom instruction, and the money a program director spends on travel may in fact be money wasted.