Legitimizing Exclusivity in Education Abroad: Roots of Selectivity in U.S. Undergraduate Study Abroad, 1950s–1970

• In Event: 44.035 - Historical Perspectives on Critical Internationalization

Abstract

Despite lofty rhetoric promoting overseas study for undergraduates, less than 10% of enrolled students in U.S. higher education study abroad before they graduate ("IIE Open Doors U.S. Study Abroad," 2015). There is also a lack of diversity in the students who study abroad for credit. Although the number of white students enrolled in U.S. higher education in 2013/14 was approximately 60% ("National Center for Eduation Statistics: Fast Facts," 2016), 74% of the students who studied abroad in the same year were white ("IIE Open Doors U.S. Study Abroad," 2015). This lack of diversity and the low level of participation in study abroad have prompted many proponents to call for new ways to expand this practice so that more undergraduate students benefit from overseas study (Brux & Fry, 2010; Cole, 1991; Currier, Lucas, & Saint Arnault, 2009; Samayoa, Gasman, & Esmieu, 2015; Twombly, 2012; Willis, 2012). While there are important financial, curricular, familial, and cultural barriers for students to study abroad (Dessoff, 2006; Salisbury, Paulsen, & Pascarella, 2011), this paper argues that the roots of selectivity in overseas study are also firmly entrenched in the same elitist policies that practitioners and advocates introduced in the 1950s and 1960s to legitimize undergraduate overseas study. Moreover, in order for contemporary practitioners to dismantle barriers for access to education abroad, they must understand the roots of selectivity in their own institutions and initiate policies that subvert existing elitist practices.
This paper uses historical research methods and discourse analysis to analyze primary source evidence from materials created by study abroad practitioners, i.e. the people who created, led, or supported study abroad programs. The primary sources used as data in this study were produced by practitioners between 1950 and 1970. The published materials include books, research studies, newspaper/magazine articles, promotional items, public speeches, memoirs, lectures, or interviews. Unpublished sources in historical archives include letters, inter-office memos, reports, proposals, and manuscripts. The majority of these primary sources touched on the then nascent subjects of international education and study abroad in U.S. postsecondary education.
This study demonstrates how practitioners established education abroad as a legitimate endeavor in U.S. higher education by emphasizing student selectivity, academic prestige and U.S. institutional control of programs. In turn, they set the stage for study abroad to be a fundamentally elitist endeavor. This work contributes to our understanding of the history of study abroad (W. H. Hoffa, 2007; W. H. Hoffa, Stephen C. DePaul, 2010), and amplifies our knowledge of the power of discourse in establishing policy in international education (Gore, 2005). Finally, this study offers contemporary practitioners a framework to understand how to implement new policies that counteract the elitist nature of study abroad in order to expand access. It also aims to encourage practitioners to pursue historical research of their own institutions in order to create more scholar-practitioners who bridge the gap between research and practice (Streitwieser & Ogden, 2016).

Author

• Eduardo Contreras, University of Portland