The growing global clout of China, India, and their Asian neighbors has American business and political leaders looking to the East.
But that orientation isn’t reflected in study-abroad numbers. Just 11 percent of American college students who go overseas choose an Asian country. Europe remains the preferred destination, drawing more than half of all study-abroad students.
“In some ways, the media is doing a better job getting the American general public to pay attention to Asia,” says Mingzheng Shi, director of New York University’s study-abroad program in Shanghai, “while academia is doing far from enough to educate students, especially at the undergraduate level.”
Mr. Shi and other international educators say the numbers remain small because the hurdles to studying in Asia are many.
Few U.S. students have studied Asian languages, and fewer still are proficient enough to function in a non-English-language classroom. Thus, for many American undergraduates, Asia can seem exotic and a little bit scary.
Professors often have stronger relationships with colleagues in Europe, leading them to steer students across the Atlantic. And many Asian institutions are focused inward, building their capacity to serve domestic students rather than seeking to recruit from abroad.
Just a handful of American colleges send significant numbers of students to Asia, and they tend to have deep roots in the region.
The University at Buffalo established its first educational exchanges with Chinese universities in 1980, just a year after the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Yale University’s experience in China dates back more than a century. At both institutions, about a quarter of students who study or intern abroad do so in Asia.
There are signs of growing academic interest in the region, however. More Americans are learning Asian languages, Chinese in particular, and at younger ages.
The number of U.S. students studying in Asia has risen by nearly 200 percent over five years. Even President Obama recently called for significantly increasing the number of students the United States sends to China.
But substantial growth will happen, experts say, only when American colleges fashion more-robust linkages with universities in the region, engage faculty members, and embed overseas education in the curriculum.
Asian institutions, meanwhile, must become more adaptable to Americans, offering student services, short-term programs, and English-language instruction.
“There’s a push factor from this end and a pull factor from Asia,” says Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president at the Institute of International Education, “and they both have to be present.”
Faculty Influence
Faculty members can be key to making or breaking study abroad in Asia. Unfamiliar with Asian universities and worried about the quality of instruction, they may balk at accepting academic credits earned abroad, discourage students from studying overseas, or guide them toward institutions, in Europe and elsewhere, where the professors have research relationships and know the curriculum, according to a recent paper, “Seeking Deeper, More Enduring Ties With Asia and Australia.”
The report grew out of a gathering last spring of higher-education leaders from the United States, China, and other Asian-Pacific countries, by Nafsa: the Association of International Educators.
Lynn C. Anderson, who organized the meeting, says her office at the University of California at San Diego tries to knock down barriers by working with professors, particularly in the sciences and engineering, to identify courses at Asian universities that would complement students’ home-campus studies and by organizing visits by faculty members to study-abroad sites.
At the same time, Asian universities could accelerate such collaborations by posting syllabi online and by sharing details about course work and textbooks with potential American partners, says Ms. Anderson, who is dean of international education at San Diego.
Sonny Lim, director of international relations at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore, and a participant in the Nafsa meeting, says American campuses should encourage faculty members to conduct research, do fieldwork, or teach in Asia. He says that professors with international experience are more supportive of study abroad. It is, he argues, “a potent self-perpetuating cycle.”
Buffalo, part of the State University of New York, has relied on faculty members to expand its study-abroad options in Asia. About half of its overseas offerings now are in Asia, says Melissa Polasik Rybarczyk, director of study-abroad programs, and most are short-term, faculty-led trips that grow out of professors’ professional and research relationships.
To encourage such courses, Buffalo has given small monetary awards to faculty members to develop programs.
In Beijing, students can study architecture and urbanism or shadow Chinese physicians on rounds, through a longstanding partnership between Buffalo’s medical-school faculty members and those at the Capital University of Medical Sciences.
Also among the faculty-led offerings is a program in Thailand that examines how legal systems are influenced by culture. David M. Engel, a law professor and former Peace Corps volunteer, says he got the idea for the class, which he teaches with his wife, Jaruwan, a Thai-language instructor, after hearing fellow faculty members talk about leading overseas-study programs.
John M. Thomas, a professor of management at Buffalo, has led student groups to China for nine years.
To put together a two-week China program for business students, he drew on his experience in the mid-1980s as a faculty member in Buffalo’s Chinese M.B.A. program and executive-training institute, offered with the Dalian University of Technology. He turns to Chinese colleagues and alumni of the joint business program, which was shuttered after the Tiananmen Square uprising, to help schedule company visits and briefings to which other academic groups might not have access.
“Over the years, we’ve built up a strong core of faculty connections,” Mr. Thomas says. “It’s just something we have in our DNA now.”
Amy Monin, a second-year M.B.A. student who went to China with Mr. Thomas in December, says the trip sparked her interest in international program management, a career path that “wasn’t necessarily on my radar.”
Out of the Comfort Zone
Ms. Monin, though, is something of a rarity. As more students with little or no international experience go abroad, educators worry they will avoid Asia because it is less familiar and more intimidating.
“It’s a much bigger step to go to Asia than to go to England,” says Margaret Heisel, director of the Center for Capacity Building in Study Abroad, a project of Nafsa and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities.
Indeed, international educators say many of those interested in Asian study are Asian-American students, who often have visited the country, know the culture, and speak the language.
Mr. Shi, of NYU, says students of Asian descent make up half those in his China program, while at the University of California at San Diego, they account for virtually all those studying in Asia.
So-called heritage students aren’t the only ones going to Asia, of course. But students of non-Asian descent who study there are more likely to have spent years focused on the region and the languages.
Christopher Morrison, a junior at Buffalo, is studying Japanese at International Christian University, in Tokyo, as part of the university’s semester- and yearlong programs abroad.
“The experience has been incredible,” says Mr. Morrison, who is living with a Japanese family. “I’ve eaten things I didn’t even know existed, gone to some amazing places inside and outside Tokyo, spent far too much money on karaoke.”
Asian-language study is on the rise, so more students like Mr. Morrison may find their way to Asia. At Buffalo, three of the five most popular foreign languages are Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, says Stephen C. Dunnett, vice provost for international education.
Still, a growing share of students going to Asia are like Ms. Monin, who had never traveled overseas. China, she says, was “a little bit of a stretch.”
“It really got me out of my comfort zone,” she says of the trip. “It got me out into the world.”
Mindful of this challenge, colleges in the U.S. and abroad are fashioning programs designed for students who may know little of the language or culture of the country they are visiting.
That’s critical because many of those heading to Asia are drawn to the region because of its relevance to their intended careers. They may want to study global finance in Hong Kong or infectious disease in India.
Yale offers a semester abroad at Peking University, where students are taught in English by Yale faculty members and housed with Chinese students.
The Alliance for Global Education, a nonprofit study-abroad provider, offers five programs in China that combine language training with courses in international business, politics and culture, and art and history. About 30 percent of its students are beginning Chinese speakers, says Janice Levitt, the executive director.
To accommodate foreign students, more Asian universities are developing English-language courses. Such programs are common in Europe, but in Asia, many more are needed, and in more-varied academic subjects that fit students’ courses of study, says Ms. Anderson, of San Diego.
Developing English-language courses is a lot of work, says Hiroshi Ota, a professor at the Center for Global Education at Hitotsubashi University, in Japan.
To attract more American and Canadian partners, Hitotsubashi recently created a program that combines 40 English-language courses with 20 additional classes of Japanese instruction.
“We are changing, but it is not easy,” Mr. Ota says, noting that the university must hire new professors and adjust its classroom culture to fit American learning styles.
Degrees of Openness
Some institutions in the region, and some countries, are more open to American students than others.
English-speaking India would seem like an obvious destination, but it has enrolled relatively low numbers of international students, just 3,146 Americans in the 2007-8 academic year, compared with China’s 13,165.
India’s opaque bureaucracy and insular orientation have complicated starting and sustaining student exchanges and other partnerships, experts say. Many Indian universities lack the infrastructure, such as dorms and student-services offices, that American students expect. What’s more, Indian universities can’t even handle domestic demand, let alone welcome international students, points out Ms. Blumenthal, of the Institute of International Education.
As a result, even institutions with a strong track record of sending students to Asia say relatively few go to India. Mr. Dunnett, the Buffalo vice provost, says many Indian universities “would rather have collaborative research agreements than take a bunch of American undergraduates.”
American students, he says, “are viewed at times as requiring an awful lot of hand-holding.”
Still, other countries in the region are seeking to bolster their international numbers. Universities in Japan and Korea, where birthrates are low, see foreign students as a way to fill slots, while countries like Singapore, where instruction is in English, want to attract top talent to position themselves as hubs of knowledge and innovation.
China has actively courted international students, offering scholarships and setting up Confucius Institutes at foreign universities to promote Chinese language and culture. “Every Chinese university has an international office eager to sign up foreign students,” Mr. Dunnett says.
Such destinations should be more attractive to American students and professors alike because of significant investments in teacher training, infrastructure, and research, Singapore’s Mr. Lim says.
But this work requires time and patience, warns Mr. Thomas, of Buffalo.
“It takes a lot of investment,” he says. “You can’t just pick up and fly over there and hope it works.”