Brexit’s Message for International Education

Kerry Geffert
Product Evangelist, Terra Dotta

Brexit. There isn’t much that hasn’t yet been written about the potential impacts on higher education by the UK’s departure from the EU. Articles of gloom and doom are counterbalanced by those expressing hopeful positivity, but at this point, all are largely speculation. What is heartening is the general willingness to attempt to maintain the flow of students, faculty, staff and research between the UK and the EU.

As the rest of the world digests the Brexit outcome, a myriad of considerations and ideas have been floated in the plethora of articles hitting the Internet:

Will more EU students head for other English-speaking countries such as the US, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada?
Will this spur the creation of more English-speaking programs in the EU?
If the GBP remains depressed, will more students, notably from India and China be attracted by the UK “bargain”? Will the same be true for those countries on the Euro?
Will US institutions see declines in UK students, but upticks in EU students?
Will US institutions temporarily shift recruitment activity from Asia or Latin America to Europe?

Time will tell the full impacts of Brexit as the uproar subsides and the real work of exiting begins. However, as international educators, the underlying reasons for Brexit may cause greater concern for the profession to which we have committed ourselves.

The Brexit vote has been sliced and diced, providing a fairly clear picture of who voted the way they did, and why. And one of the themes that emerged was one of nationalism. While some saw EU membership as providing economic and educational benefits, others perceived a relinquishing of self-governance.

It is this perception of a lack of self-governance that may cause us concern. Whether true or not, the manifestation is nationalism, or “nativism” to use the recent words of President Obama. “Take back our country” was a phrase used frequently during the period leading up to the referendum vote. It is a phrase that is familiar to Americans, too, having been heard in our own current presidential race. However, this trend is not new. Michael Hirsh, in a recent Politico Magazine article, wrote, “perhaps most unsettling of all is that the U.S. and Europe are only catching up to a trend that has already taken hold elsewhere in the major industrialized nations.” Hirsh identifies Russia, China and Japan as other nations in which nationalistic movements have grown. He goes on to write, “what is at stake most immediately is the world economy…But in the longer run, world peace could be threatened as well.”

World peace. That perhaps-trite phrase that has served as a guiding principle for decades of international educators. Within the What We Believe section of the website of NAFSA: Association of International Educators is stated “we believe that international education lies at the core of an interconnected world characterized by peace [emphasis added], security, and well-being for all.” Further in NAFSA’s Aspirations, “we aspire to enlightened international relations, a globally engaged citizenry, and a more peaceful world.” [emphasis added]

Those aspirations found their roots in the post-World War II era. “NAFSA was founded in 1948…for assisting and advising the 25,000 foreign students who had come to study in the United States after World War II.” (NAFSA website) The United Nations had been founded in 1945; the Charter’s Preamble includes these words: “to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours...” In the United States, the Fulbright Program was established with the first participants going in 1948 “to develop post war leadership and engage constructively with the community of nations.”

Hirsh observes that “the primary impetus behind the EU also was the prevention of another war. While the particulars of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty that created the Eurozone were dryly economic, the unspoken subtext was always unmistakably political: Europeans had to unite, if only because continued disunity would keep them at the edge of the abyss.”

International educators, therefore, are in good company when espousing the objectives of cultural understanding, mutual respect and peaceful coexistence. This is, after all, what drew many of us and keeps us in the profession. Many of our lives were transformed because of experiences as a study abroad student, a Peace Corps Volunteer, or as a “global nomad.”

It is this mindset of cultural appreciation that we strive to pass on to our students. International students are encouraged to share their cultures through special functions or presentations in the community. We now do more to assist study abroad students with understanding their experiences beyond “it changed my life.”

International student enrollments continue to increase at a steady rate. Study abroad enrollments are also growing, though not as quickly as our industry might hope. Scholarship schemes have been created at the federal level to encourage study abroad in greater numbers and by a more diverse population. A recent State Department report, The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program, Evaluation Report, found that:

“Virtually all interviewed family and community members believed that Scholars’ experiences had affected them in varying degrees. Some family members responded to their Scholar’s desire to discuss international topics by developing more of an interest in foreign news. A few interviewees who had only traveled domestically in the United States reported a new eagerness to go to another country ... A small number of family members reported hosting international students, either because they were interested in “giving back” the kind of experience that their Scholar had while abroad, or to support their family member’s new interest in hosting foreign exchange participants.” (pp 7-8)

For all of this good news about international education, what then do we make of this rise in nationalism? What does it say about the growth in education abroad? What does this bode for the mobility of students, the collaboration of faculty, cross-cultural understanding and, well, world peace?

Internationalization has become a buzzword on campuses across the United States. Madeleine Green, a senior fellow at NAFSA and the International Association of Universities (IAU), reported that 86 percent of U.S. respondents to a 2013 IAU survey “mention[ed] internationalization in their institutional mission statement or strategic plan.” While this sounds impressive, Green notes that this is in contrast to 92 percent of all respondents worldwide. Further, “[s]ixty-nine percent of all respondents indicated that internationalization was of high importance to their institutional leaders, compared to 53 percent of U.S. respondents.” Still, over half must be a step in the right direction. Or is it?

Roopa Desai Trilokekar recently took on Canada’s 2014 international education strategy in an article for NAFSA’s Trends & Insights series. She asserts that the strategy has “four highly problematic discourses about internationalization of higher education:”

“Societal exclusion” – “In this context, internationalization has less to do with organic, bottom-up student, faculty, and institutional academic work and natural choices but more to do with strategic alliances for intended and measured benefits.”
“Class hierarchy” – “building elitism in our national systems is considered a strategic choice for reasons of national prosperity and global competition.”
“Protection of political borders” – “why we engage in internationalization becomes less about engaging in mobility for the purposes of international and intercultural understanding and more about strengthening national political and economic borders…”
“Global competition (not reciprocity)” – “The…discourse increasingly speaks of a competitive world of the haves and the have-nots…[strengthening] the geopolitical status quo by privileging the already privileged...”

Dr. Trilokekar is not the only person raising concerns about internationalization. Among the topics of the IAU study was an examination of institutional and societal risks of internationalization. “Respondents in all regions except Europe rank the risk that international opportunities will be available only to students with financial resources as the most important.” At a societal level, the “commodification of education” and the “unequal sharing of [the] benefits of internationalization among partners” were the top concerns of a combined 37% of the respondents. (p. 10)

Despite our best efforts at increasing and diversifying the mobility of students and broadening the opportunities for international cooperation, is international education losing ground to a rise in nationalism? Has education abroad become more about a fun trip overseas and post-graduation employment and less about cultural understanding, empathy and world peace (as trite as it sounds)? Are international students on our campuses more about full-fees and less about opportunities to build bridges of understanding?

To be sure, there are many, many good outcomes from the current state of international education and internationalization. One shudders at the thought of where we might be without those successes. But we must ask ourselves whether those successes are the result of the unique personalities of those individuals (who “get it”) and less the result of our efforts to promote the personal benefits of seeing the world through a new set of eyes.

The Brexit vote and our own current political environment indicate a disturbing split, almost down the middle, of our populaces. During the recent NAFSA Annual Conference, speakers encouraged attendees to become involved in the political conversation on matters such as immigration. We must also go back to the basic premise of what makes international education an imperative. When we do this, it is not just the politicians who must be convinced, but a significant portion of our citizenry also must be convinced that international education is about peaceful coexistence and cooperation.

This may require conceptualizing new paradigms and targeting new populations. As NAFSA President, Fanta Aw, recently told The PIE News: “It’s easy to be overwhelmed by everything that’s around us, and in many ways to be paralysed by it, but we have to have hope because the opposite of hope is a very scary proposition. We’re hoping…to have our colleagues to really start thinking provocatively about our field, to have some deeper reflections about the nature and purpose of the work that we’re engaged in.”

Time will reveal the full impact of the Brexit vote. International education certainly will not be immune from its impact, challenging us to reflect on our profession and its importance for tomorrow’s leaders.

Resources

“About Senator J. William Fulbright.” About Us.” Council for International Exchange of Scholars. Web. June 30, 2016. (https://www.cies.org/about-us/about- senator-j- william-fulbright)

Charter of the United Nations, Preamble. Adopted June 26, 1945.

“NAFSA: international educators told to combat ‘unwelcoming rhetoric’.” The PIE News. June 8, 2016.

“Strategic Internationalization: At What Cost?” Trends & Insights. NAFSA: Association of International Educators. February 2016.

The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program, Evaluation Report. Evaluation Division, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. April 2016.

“The Best in the World? Not in Internationalization.” Trends & Insights. NAFSA: Association of International Educators. October 2014.

“The History of NAFSA: Association of International Educators.” About NAFSA. NAFSA: Association of International Educators. Web. (https://www.nafsa.org/Learn_About_NAFSA/History/)

“Why the New Nationalists Are Taking Over.” Politico Magazine. June 27, 2016. (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/nationalism-donald- trump-boris- johnson-brexit-foreign-policy- xenophobia-isolationism- 213995)