Education (In)Equality from the 1870’s to 1954 – A Brief History

In Pennsylvania, the 1870’s was a time of important legislative movement. In 1870, the Republicans in the state legislature of Pennsylvania introduced legislation to end discrimination of African Americans in schools and in 1874 an antidiscrimination bill passed the state senate.[1] By 1881, a county court ruled on a case brought by an African American father, Elias H. Allen, who wanted his children to attend a White public school in Meadville, Pennsylvania and determined that “the Pennsylvania segregation law violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” and required that African American children be admitted to public schools that were closest to their homes.[2] Vincent Franklin reports that the Philadelphia school system in 1908 consisted of nine Black public schools yet a majority of African American children attended mixed schools. A complicating factor during this time period was that African American teachers were not allowed to teach White children in the Philadelphia public school system. Several research studies by individuals such as Byron Phillips and Howard Odum focused on intelligence and compared White and African American school aged children. The “results” showed that African American children were “retarded” more than White children were which further fueled the argument that African American and White children were to be schooled under different curriculums and that African American school children were to be segregated from White children.[3] Public education in the South was especially challenging for African Americans during this time period. The Southern education movement from 1901 to 1915 saw a resistance in educational reform for African Americans.[4] African Americans experienced both racist attitudes and laws in all aspects of their lives including their education. During this time period, Whites in South Carolina opposed public education for African Americans and Whites in North Carolina were strongly against taxation for African American schools while Georgia allowed school boards to exempt African American children from the compulsory school attendance law that was passed in 1916.[5]

A challenge for public school systems in Northern cities, including in Philadelphia, were the large numbers of African American families that migrated from the South primarily from 1915 to 1930. Vincent Franklin reports that by 1920, the number of African Americans in Philadelphia grew 58.9% to 134,000 people in ten years and by 1930 the number of African Americans had grown by 63.5% to over 200,000 people.[6] Major cities in the Midwest also saw significant increases in the growth of the African American population during the first few decades of the twentieth century or what many called the “Migrant Crisis.” Between 1910 and 1920, the city of Chicago saw a sharp increase in its African American population by 148% or 124,000 people, Detroit’s African American population grew by 35,000 or 611% and the African American population in Cleveland grew 308% or 26,000 people.[7] The migration of large numbers of African Americans to northern cities also had an impact in Southern states and the public funding of schools for African Americans in the South. Many White landowners in the South were concerned with the loss of cash tenants, share-croppers, and laborers who were migrating north and returned public tax funds in order to build rural schools in the hope that many African Americans would consider staying in the South.[8] James Anderson reports that nearly half of the African American’s in Georgia left the state during the 1920’s.[9] To be sure, the considerable demographic shifts witnessed in the urban cities of the North and in the Southern states from the early 1900’s to the 1930’s had a significant impact on the schooling of African Americans during this time period.

The decade preceding the Brown v. Board decision continued to be a time of difficulty for African Americans in the United States. Civil rights abuses were part of the every day life of African Americans. This post-World War II time period for African Americans, despite all of the discriminatory practices they encountered, was also one of hope. In 1947, President Harry Truman was keen on passing civil rights legislation and he commissioned the Congressional Committee on Civil Rights to provide the United States with a public agenda for change.[10] The Committee report outlined the discrimination that African Americans experienced all across the United States. The Committee reported that the legal school segregation found in seventeen states and the District of Columbia was inappropriate and unfair and stated “whatever test is used-expenditure per pupil, teachers’ salaries, the number of pupils per teacher, transportation of students, adequacy of school buildings and educational equipment, length of school term, extent of curriculum-Negro students are invariably at a disadvantage.”[11] Of the 48 states that made up the United States at the time of the Brown v. Board decision in 1954, seventeen states and the District of Columbia required school segregation, four states permitted school segregation to a certain degree, sixteen states prohibited school segregation and eleven states had no specific laws on school segregation.[12] The history of African American struggles for educational equality dating back to the Roberts v. The City of Boston case in 1849 to the various school segregation laws of the 48 states of the Union in 1954 laid the groundwork for Oliver Brown et al.[13] to have their case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States. The time period leading up to the Brown v. Board decision and the years immediately following the case were challenging times in American education. While desegregation efforts were important for African American school children and their families this effort was part of a much larger issue in American society, that being the Civil Rights Movement.

[1] Franklin, V.P. The Education of Black Philadelphia: The Social and Educational History of a Minority Community, 1900-1950. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 34.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid, p. 41-48.
[4] Anderson, J.D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 101.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid, p. 60-61.
[7] Dougherty, J. More than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 52.
[8] Anderson, 159.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ravitch, D. The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983), 21.
[11] Cited in Ravitch, p. 22 from To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947).
[12] Data obtained from analysis of a map showing the status of school segregation law prior to the Brown v. Board case that is presented in Dougherty, 37.
[13] Other legal case included with the Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case included: Briggs v. Elliott (South Carolina), Bolling v. Sharpe (Washington, D.C.), Belton v. Gebhart (Delaware), and Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia).

New practice resources on NAFSA Teaching, Learning and Scholarship, Research/Scholarship network

The new practice resources include links to:

1) Internet Resources for Higher Education Outcomes Assessment, NC State University
2) Information on the Forum on Education Abroad publication "The Guide to Outcomes Assessment in Education Abroad" edited by Mell Bolen
3) The Research Center of CIEE: The Council on International Educational Exchange
4) Research on Education Abroad Database (READ) of the Forum on Education Abroad
5) New journals added to the "Research-based Publications on International Education" practice resource

I hope you find some of these new resources to be of interest and helpful to your work and research. You can access the NAFSA TLS RS network here <www.nafsa.org/RSnetwork>

Postmodern Discourse

This is the seventh and final post where I will briefly review the works of comparative education scholars and place them along an epistemological spectrum. For this post, I’m looking at postmodern discourse.

Rust, V.D. 1991. “Postmodernism and its Comparative Education Implications,” Comparative Education Review 35, no. 2: 610-626.

Postmodern discourse is another “fringe epistemology” on Epstein’s epistemological spectrum. During his presidential address to the Comparative and International Education Society, Rust argued that “postmodernism should be a central concept in our comparative education discourse.”[1] Rust confesses that his “own orientation is a tempered acceptance of the notion of an era shift. Of course, the world is so pluralistic that a variety of conditions and orientations will always exist simultaneously; however, the pervasive ideology of modernism and modernity has been ruptured and is undergoing radical reconstruction.”[2] There are two passages by Rust that stand out in his argument for a postmodern discourse theoretical position. First, he states that “the postmodern world is decentered, constantly changing, without the chains and conventions of modern society. Its proponents believe the story of pluralistic contemporary society is being written by a number of narratives and reject philosophical systems of thought that provide some universal standard.” [3] In relation to Vandra Masemann’s call “for the legitimacy of varied ways of knowing”, Rust argues that “postmodernists would support that claim and reject any claim that one way of knowing is the only legitimate way. Rather, they would say our task is to determine which approach to knowing is appropriate to specific interests and needs rather than argue some universal application and validity, which ends up totalizing and confining in its ultimate effect.”[4] Rust’s extreme relativistic/ideographic approach to comparative education in his work finds a home in postmodern discourse with other comparative education scholars such as Rolland Paulston, Martin Liebman, Peter Ninnes and Gregory Burnett.

In conclusion to these series of posts, comparative education scholars approach their scholarship from a wide variety of epistemological viewpoints. This, in my opinion, is necessary in all academic scholarship and something that is very important in all fields of academia. An interesting question that surfaces from time to time in the field is the impact that comparative education research has on policy. An interesting perspective to this question was put forward by Keith Watson when he wrote that “the widely held criticisms that comparative education is too fragmented and irrelevant for policy makers is harder to refute…there are many reasons for this: personality clashes, arguments over terminology, too much emphasis on methodology and not enough on substance.”[5] My posts do not attempt to answer the question of comparative education’s impact on educational policy. I present Watson’s position only to provide an interesting perspective on the different epistemological positions that comparativists bring to the table.

[1] Rust, V.D. “Postmodernism and its Comparative Education Implications,” (Comparative Education Review 35, no. 2, 1991), 610.
[2] Ibid, 611-612.
[3] Ibid, 616.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Keith Watson, “Comparative Educational Research: The Need for Reconceptualisation and Fresh Insights,” Compare 29, no. 3, (1999): 237.

Building a Campus Network to Advise Undergraduate Fulbright Applicants

For the past eight years I have served as the Fulbright Program Adviser at the University of Chicago. For this post, I will focus on how we have built a network across campus to not only better promote the program but, more importantly, to advise undergraduates students on their applications and guide them through the process. Each spring quarter we hold two information sessions about the program specifically for third- and fourth-year undergraduate students. I promote these information sessions in a variety of ways. First, I take the traditional approach of posting flyers across campus. Second, I send a personal message to each and every faculty/academic staff member who serves as the undergraduate program chair of our 50+ majors and minors asking them to send information about the information sessions to their students. Third, I work with our undergraduate academic advising staff and ask them to inform all of their third- and fourth-year students. Fourth, I have access to a university database where I can target specific students and I e-mail every third- and fourth-year student in the College with a grade point average of 3.0 and above announcing the information sessions.

In addition to the spring information sessions we hold for the third- and fourth-year students we also hold general scholarship information sessions specifically tailored for second-year students. These information sessions are held during autumn and winter quarters and the goals of these sessions are to not only inform students of the various scholarship/fellowship opportunities that are available both during their undergraduate studies and post-graduation but also to educate them on what makes a competitive application, establishing relationships with faculty and planning for course and activities that will be an asset to future research and/or studies abroad. We discuss scholarships/fellowships such as the Fulbright, Rhodes, Marshall, Boren and Gilman as well as many other funding opportunities. We encourage students to take electives such as statistics, ethnographic research methods, or courses in area studies that will give them a strong foundation from which to build upon during their research abroad. We have found that there is very strong interest by our second-year students in these information meetings and we are now planning to hold meetings for our first-year students.

Finally, we have created a network of faculty and other academic staff members who have agreed to meet with prospective applicants to discuss their research interests and to go give advice and direction on how to put together the most competitive application. We have found this process to especially helpful for our students as they prepare their applications.

New Univ. of Maryland Diversity & Study Abroad Website

Institutions wanting to develop web resources to support and increase the diversity of their study abroad population may want to model their efforts after a new diversity and study abroad website at the University of Maryland. I find this to be a very comprehensive resource. You can view UM’s announcement of the new website here: http://www.umd.edu/fyi/index.cfm?id=18761

ResearchGATE Scientific Network

I recently became aware of this new and interesting website created to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing between researchers across the globe. ResearchGATE was started in May 2008 and is free of charge. You can access ResearchGATE here: https://www.researchgate.net/

Illinois Congressman Asks State Dept. to Screen 3 Palestinian Fulbright Recipients

Illinois Congressman Mark Kirk (member of the Lincoln Commission) has asked the United States Department of State to screen the 3 Fulbright recipients from Gaza. Representative Kirk is concerned about the student’s affiliation with the Islamic University in Gaza which several media outlets report is affiliated with or supported by Hamas. According to The New York Sun today, Representative Kirk wants these Fulbright recipients “to be vetted through the U.S. Agency for International Development's Terrorist Screening Center, a new vetting process created to keep development aid out of the hands of terrorists.”

In separate but related news, the Office of Inspector General of the United States Agency for International Development conducted an audit of USAID/West Bank and Gaza’s assistance to Al-Quds University, the Islamic University in Gaza, and American Near East Refugee Aid and released its report (Report No. 6-294-08-002-P) on December 10, 2007. The audit determined that USAID/West Bank and Gaza “did not always follow applicable Federal laws, regulations, or ISAID policies when providing assistance to Al-Quds University, the Islamic University in Gaza, and American Near East Refugee Aid.” You can access the Inspector General’s report here: www.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy08rpts/6-294-08-002-p.pdf.

Relativism

This is the sixth post where I will briefly review the works of comparative education scholars and place them along an epistemological spectrum. For this post, I’m looking at relativism.

Fromm, E. and M. Maccoby. 1970. Social Character in a Mexican Village: A Sociopsychoanalytic Study. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby’s sociopsychoanalytic study is an excellent example of a relativistic epistemological approach to comparative education. Fromm and Maccoby acknowledge that in publishing their research they “count on having the attention of those who are not dogmatically sealed off from at least being interested in a new venture: the application of psychoanalytic categories to the study of social groups.”[1] Methodologically, Fromm and Maccoby, in their effort to “discover the nuclear character of each villager and to find the relationship between character and specific need”, administered open-ended questions which required psychoanalytic interpretation.[2] Fromm and Maccoby describe the formation of the social character as “mediated by the influence of the “total culture”: the methods of raising children, of education in terms of schooling, literature, art, religion, customs; in short, the whole cultural fabric guarantees its stability.”[3] Throughout the piece, Fromm and Maccoby provide explanations for their theoretical approach.

Masemann, V.L. 1982. “Critical Ethnography in the Study of Comparative Education,” Comparative Education Review 26, no. 1: 1-15.[4]

In Vandra Masemann’s review of the use of critical ethnography in the study of comparative education places her work under relativism on the epistemological spectrum. While discussing anthropological approaches to comparative education, Masemann states that it “becomes a very interesting point to ponder the extent to which the anthropologist can acquire an inside understanding of the subjective reality of the informant, even if he/she is adept at ‘personally replicating appropriate language and behavior in another culture.’ Such problems in research lead directly to a discussion of the more subjective philosophical and symbolic interactionist approaches.” From ethnography, as Masemann states, “the main emphases are on participant-observation of the small scale as a method, with an attempt to understand the culture and symbolic life of the actors involved.”[5] Masemann argues that the implications for the use of critical ethnography in comparative education “are profound” and that “the process of educational entropy which consists of the evermore effective spread of certain old and new forms of ‘rationality’ could be a most challenging new field of research in comparative education.”[6]

[1] Fromm, E. and M. Maccoby. Social Character in a Mexican Village: A Sociopsychoanalytic Study. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970), 8.
[2] Ibid, 24.
[3] Ibid, 24.
[4] Masemann, V.L. “Critical Ethnography in the Study of Comparative Education,” (Comparative Education Review 26, no. 1, 1982), 5.
[5] Ibid, 13.
[6] Ibid, 14-15.

Grateful Dead Donate Their Archives to UC Santa Cruz

In April, Mickey Hart and Bob Weir annouced that the Grateful Dead would donate their archives to the University of California, Santa Cruz. You can read the Santa Cruz press announcement here: http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=2142 and access the Grateful Dead Archive here: http://library.ucsc.edu/speccoll/GD_archive.html.

The Historic “Seven Sisters”

In 1927 seven women’s colleges came together to form the “Seven Sisters” in an effort to promote private, independent women’s colleges and separate but equal liberal arts education for women.

Institutions that made up the “Seven Sisters” are:

Barnard College (New York, NY)
Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, PA)
Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA)
Radcliffe College (Cambridge, MA)
Smith College (Northampton, MA
Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY)
Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)

The organizational website: http://eclipse.barnard.columbia.edu/~sga/seven/

U.S. Image Sees Slight Improvement In Many Countries

The results of a new study released last Thursday by The Pew Global Attitudes Project indicate that the image of the United States has improved slightly in many countries over the past year. Improvements in the United States' image abroad were strongest in Tanzania, South Korea and Indonesia. In many countries, including many in Western Europe, the United States continues to maintain a poor image and, while not surprising, the U.S. is viewed as highly unfavorable in the Muslim world. You can view this Pew Research Center report here: http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/260.pdf

Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act

Yesterday, the Christian Science Monitor pbulished an article entitled "Send More Students Abroad" by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton (former chair and vice chair of the 9/11 commission). It's an interresting read and you can access the article here: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008//p09s01-coop.html.

National Character Analysis

This is the fifth post where I will briefly review the works of comparative education scholars and place them along an epistemological spectrum. For this post, I’m looking at national character analysis.

Bereday, G.Z.F. 1964. Sir Michael Sadler’s “Study of Foreign Systems of Education.
Comparative Education Review 7, no. 3: 307-314.

Sir Michael Sadler’s How Far Can We Learn Anything of Practical Value from the Study of Foreign Systems of Education? clearly falls within the national character analysis epistemological framework of comparative education. Sadler emphasized the importance of experiencing and observing life outside of the school or classroom when studying foreign systems of education. This emphasis is found in several of his statements such as “if we propose to study foreign systems of education, we must not keep our eyes on the brick and mortar institutions, nor on the teachers and pupils only, but we must also go outside into the streets and into the homes of the people, and try to find out what is the intangible, impalpable, spiritual force which, in the case of any successful system of Education, is in reality upholding the school system and accounting for its practical efficiency”[1] and “in studying foreign systems of Education we should not forget that the things outside the schools matter even more than the things inside the schools, and govern and interpret the things inside…A national system of Education is a living thing, the outcome of forgotten struggles and difficulties, and ‘of battles long ago.’ It has in it some of the secret workings of national life. It reflects, while it seeks to remedy, the failings of the national character.”[2]

Renner, R.R. 1988. “Developing Homeplace Values in Children: European Origins and
American Implications. American Journal of Education 96, no. 4: 519-532.

I place the work of Richard Renner under national character analysis on the epistemological spectrum. Renner’s ideographic approach is found throughout the article and in particular when he states that “educational rhetoric places a high value on the tradition of local control; local knowledge, however, is relatively unimportant.”[3] Renner argues that “nonvaluing of homeplace knowledge, that bit of life the child knows best, is widely believed to foster an attitude of rootlessness, valuelessness, and alienation.”[4] Further, the underlying concept of homeplace lore, “is the premise that all who share a common homeplace or community are unavoidably linked to a valued destiny.”[5] Finally, Renner states that “the larger world can be mastered only by beginning with one’s particular surroundings; only thus can develop the self-assurance so necessary for a solid foundation later in life. Too often is it forgotten that only through homeplace mastery can one attain sufficient awareness of self to profit from further exploration of strange or foreign ways.”[6] While I placed Renner’s work under national character analysis I leave the possibility open that he may be a better fit under relativism on the epistemological spectrum.

[1] Bereday, G.Z.F. Sir Michael Sadler’s “Study of Foreign Systems of Education. (Comparative Education Review 7, no. 3, 1964): 309.
[2] Ibid, 310.
[3]Renner, R.R. “Developing Homeplace Values in Children: European Origins and American Implications. (American Journal of Education 96, no. 4, 1988) 519.
[4] Ibid, 520.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid, 30.

Internationalization of German Higher Education

I recently came across three very interesting reports on the internationalization of German Higher Education that I thought I'd share with readers. The publications with links follow:

Internationalization of Higher Education
-Foreign Students in Germany
-German Students Abroad
By the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (http://www.bmbf.de/pub/internationalization_of_higher_education_2008.pdf)

Analysing the Future Market – Target Countries for German HEIs
Working Paper No. 107
by CHE Centre for Higher Education Development
http://www.che.de/downloads/Analysing_the_Future_Market_Target_Countries_for_German_HEIs_AP107.pdf

How to Measure Internationality and Internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions! Indicators and Key Figures
by CHE Centre for Higher Education Development
http://www.che.de/downloads/How_to_measure_internationality_AP_92.pdf

Paul Simon Video on NAFSA's YouTube Page

NAFSA: Association of International Educators recently started their own YouTube page. One of their videos is of Paul Simon discussing via video on November 13, 2003 (just 3 1/2 weeks before his death) how the United States is viewed around the world and the importance of sending more U.S. students abroad via the Lincoln Fellowship.

If you haven't urged your Senators to pass the Simon Study Abroad Act via NAFSA's Take Action Center (http://capwiz.com/nafsa/home/) then I urge you to watch this 4:59 minute video of Senator Simon and then take 1 minute to Take Action!

You can access NAFSA's YouTube page here: http://www.youtube.com/user/nafsatube

The Fulbright Seven

In a follow-up to the previous posts I made concerning the Fulbright grantees from Gaza, the seven Gazan students will now be allowed to study in the United States as Fulbright grantees. Both the Israeli and United States Governments have reviewed the cases at the senior administrative levels and have reversed earlier decisions. I found the following New York Times brief editorial on the situation to be interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/opinion/08sun3.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin.

German Population Decreasing, Foreign Students Increasing

In the May 30, 2008 News from DAAD New York, an interesting piece on the decline of the German population and the increase in the number of foreign students coming to Germany caught my attention. You can access the report on the declining German population here: www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3347799,00.html and the report on the increasing foreign student population here: www.bmbf.de/pub/internationalization_of_higher_education_2008.pdf .

Historical Functionalism

This is the fourth post where I will briefly review the works of comparative education scholars and place them along an epistemological spectrum. For this post, I’m looking at historical functionalism.

Kandel, I.L. 1956. Problems of Comparative Education. International Review of Education 2, no. 1: 1-15.

A review and discussion of Issac Kandel’s Problems of Comparative Education provides an opportunity to illustrate the historical functionalism theoretical approach in comparative education. Kandel provides advice to the student of comparative education throughout the piece and states that “it is by analysis that he can acquire a clearer understanding of the problems of education. An educational system not only has its roots embedded in a traditional cultural pattern which is constantly being modified by influences that are at one time spiritual, at another political, and at still another socio-economic, but it also reflects the hopes of a nation for the future.”[1] Further examples of both ideographic and nomothetic thought are found in the following statements by Kandel, “it is questionable whether the subject can be successfully studied without a firsthand observation of several school systems and this often requires not only the means to travel but knowledge of foreign languages. Observation and visitation are essential, for one is likely to be misled by the information found in educational literature if there is no opportunity to check it”[2] and “another set of difficulties await the student of comparative education because of the complete absence of standardized terminology and statistical reports.”[3] Kandel allows for both nomothetic and ideographic approaches to comparative education as a means of answering questions.

Thurber, C.H. ca. 1900. The Principles of School Organization: A Comparative Study Chiefly Based on the Systems of the United States, England, Germany and France. PhD diss, Clark University.

In Thurber’s work we see the first historical functionalism epistemological framework in comparative education. In his dissertation, Thurber writes that “education, as a system, is a development, a product of the evolution of society, and that if the form we have seems not quite to fit our highest conceptions, the way to better is not by bartering what we have for what some one else has, not by building a lean-to against our present structure. Further study might well be given to the basal problem for each country: how has the existing condition-system or lack of it- been developed out of the co-operations and antagonisms of universal principles and national peculiarities?”[4] This statement above is perhaps the first statement of historical functionalism in comparative education.

[1] Kandel, I.L. Problems of Comparative Education. (International Review of Education 2, no. 1, 1956), 5.
[2] Ibid, 6.
[3] Ibid, 10.
[4] Thurber, C.H. The Principles of School Organization: A Comparative Study Chiefly Based on the Systems of the United States, England, Germany and France. ( PhD diss. Clark University, ca. 1900), 6.

Resources from NAFSA conference sessions

During the NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference last week in D.C. I was a panelist at three separate sessions and chaired the special research seminar on global student mobility. The plan is for all of the power point slides and other handouts to be made avialable online. As the session materials or other information about the sessions become available I will post messages with information on where to access the documents. Following is what is currently available:

Assessment Toolbox for International Educators
Presenters: David Comp, University of Chicago
Darla Deardorff, Duke University
Elaine Meyer-Lee, Saint Mary's College
Lee Glover Sternberg, James Madison University
Victor Savicki, Western Oregon University
http://www.saintmarys.edu/~cwil/php/intercultural.learning/IILOutcomes.php

and

Data and Research on U.S. Multicultural Students in Study Abroad
Presenters: David Comp, University of Chicago
Gayle Woodruff, University of Minnesota
http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/29/nafsa

Court tells Israel to review Gaza student travel

For those of you who have been following the recent news of Israel’s refusal to allow Palestinian students to leave Gaza to study abroad in the United Kingdom, Germany and in the United States on a Fulbright (now reinstated by the State Department after initially withdrawing the awards), an article published by Reuters yesterday provides an update as the Israeli Supreme Court has now weighed in. You can read more here: http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSL02404231

IIE and AIFS Foundation to Launch New Research Report Series

From the May 27, 2008 IIE.Interactive Special:

The Institute of International Education (IIE) and the American Institute For Foreign Study (AIFS) Foundation will launch a new series of Global Education Research Reports. The first report, to be published in Fall 2008, will look at educational exchange between the U.S. and China. The reports will include original research by IIE, as well as contributions by other experts in the field of international education.

The AIFS Foundation has provided a grant to publish five reports over the next three years, with the goal of exploring the most pressing and under-researched issues affecting international education policy today. Support for this research initiative is part of the Foundation's mission to provide educational and cultural exchange opportunities to foster greater understanding among the people of the world.

As two of the largest and most experienced cultural and educational exchange organizations in the United States and the world, IIE and AIFS possess an unmatched capacity to engage educators, policymakers and institutions in the internationalization process. The two organizations will jointly distribute the research reports to their members and partners and other interested parties including educators, researchers and policy professionals.

This project builds on a series of twenty-nine IIE Research Reports commissioned and published since 1983. These reports covered diverse topics such as "Absence of Decision: Foreign Students in American Colleges and Universities," "Higher Education in the 21st Century: Global Challenge and National Response" and "Obligation or Opportunity: Foreign Student Policy in Six Major Receiving Countries." These reports were researched and written by leading scholars in international education studies, including Philip G. Altbach, Alice Chandler, Craufurd D. Goodwin, and Michael Nacht.

IIE has a history of providing timely and targeted policy information to the international education community. For over 50 years, IIE has published the Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange. More recently, IIE developed the Atlas of Student Mobility, an important data source on global student mobility and began publishing Meeting America's Global Education Challenge, a series of White Papers on capacity issues in study abroad. IIE also produces the bi-annual IIENetworker Magazine, which publishes articles and updates on key topics in international education.

The AIFS Foundation's previous reports include "The Gender Gap in Post-Secondary Education Abroad," by Steven W. Shirley, "Innocents at Home Redux: The Continuing Challenge to America's Future," by Denis P. Doyle, and several reports edited by Martin Tillman, including "Study Abroad: A 21st Century Perspective" and "Impact of Education Abroad on Career Development: Four Community College Case Studies."

Back From NAFSA Conference

I'm back home in Chicago from a grueling week at the NAFSA conference held in Washington, D.C. While I was out of the office I wasn't blogging as internet access whas a bit challenging and my schedule was packed with presentations and meetings. I will be resuming my blogging activities again this week.