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."