First Nation to Enter Fulbright Cost-Sharing Agreement with the United States

The Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act required that participating countries in the various Fulbright scholarship programs commit to a cost-sharing agreement with the United States Department of State. Germany was the first nation to enter into a Fulbright cost-sharing agreement and has paid for half of the costs associated with this German-American program since 1962.[1]


[1] Trent, 3; Ulrich Littmann, “A Host Country’s View: The Federal Republic of Germany” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, 491 The Fulbright Experience and Academic Exchanges, (May, 1987), 81.

Some States See Decline in Total U.S. Study Abroad Numbers

I’m pleased to introduce our second guest blogger today. Chip Peterson from the Learning Abroad Center at the University of Minnesota has identified an interesting trend in the Open Doors 2008 data. Chip’s post follows:

While glancing through the most recent Open Doors data I noticed a curious phenomenon. One of the tables in the report is entitled, STUDY ABROAD BY U.S. STATE, 2005/06 & 2006/07. According to that table, overall study abroad numbers increased for forty states (plus DC) and declined for ten states. Four of the latter ten are located in the Upper Midwest: Iowa (-0.2%), Minnesota (-1.5%), North Dakota (-16.7%), and Wisconsin (-0.9%)! Within the Upper Midwest only South Dakota experienced an increase (+40.8%).


The remaining six states with declines were much more scattered geographically: Delaware, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Vermont.


The overall national increase, for comparison, was +8.2%.


What do you think is going on here?

HEA of Ireland Encourages More Irish Students to Study Abroad

The Thursday, November 20th edition of The Irish Times published an interesting article on the Higher Education Authority of Ireland and their plans to encourage more Irish students to study abroad. According to the article, only 1,800 Irish students study abroad each year. You can access The Irish Times article here: http://tinyurl.com/62rhjk

You can read more about student study abroad trends of Irish students and related statistics in the Eurostudent Survey II: Irish Report on the Social and Living Conditions of Higher Education Students 2003/2004 (HEA, 2005) here: http://tinyurl.com/6f2xdn

Anthropological Fieldwork Abroad with Children

As a Master of Science in Family Science (yes there is such a degree) who is working in the field of international education I found an article entitled “Fieldwork with Three Children” on insidehighered.com to be very interesting. Those of you working with faculty with children or with students who have children on planning their overseas academic endeavors might also find this to be an interesting article as well.

You can access the article here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/25/anthro

Diplomatic History

I just read a very interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Why We Need Diplomatic History” by Douglas Little from Clark University. I won’t summarize the article here but am providing a link (http://tinyurl.com/6jywxy) as I think many readers of this blog will find it of interest.

Can a U.S. Student Study Abroad in the United States?

As International Education Week 2008 comes to a close I wanted to pose a question that I’ve been grappling with for some time now. Can a U.S. student study abroad in the United States and, if so, can or should we count them in the Open Doors Report on U.S. Students Studying Abroad?

My answer to both these questions is “Yes” but only in certain cases. I’m thinking about the TCKs (Third Culture Kids) who hold U.S. citizenship or the dual citizens (U.S. and any other nationality) who have lived most or their entire lives outside of the United States[1] but come to the United States to pursue a higher education. I argue that many U.S. students attending our colleges and universities who meet such a profile are actually studying abroad. We don’t collect data on these types of students (and in many cases offer little or no support for these students) because we base our data collection efforts solely on U.S. citizenship and act of earning academic credit anywhere outside of the United States. The problem, of course, with collecting data on the types of students that I’m suggesting is determining a criterion or measure for qualification into this unique group of students. This measure would be based primarily on the amount of time spent living outside of the United States. If this was the only or the primary measure used in determining the eligibility of a student to be counted as a U.S. student studying abroad in the United States, what amount of time would make one eligible?

[1] Children of ex-patriots and military children could also be included in this cohort.

International Students Contribute $15.54 Billion to U.S. Economy

In conjunction with the release of IIE’s Open Doors 2008, NAFSA has released their annual 2007-2008 Economic Impact Statements. You can download the economic impact summary for the entire United States or by individual states.

I wonder what the economic impact of the 241,791 U.S. students who studied abroad in 2006-2007 was on the United States?

You can access NAFSA’s Economic Impact Statements here: http://www.nafsa.org/public_policy.sec/international_education_1/eis_2008