Enhancing Professionalism in International Higher Education by Developing and Maintaining Complex International Agreements
Gary Rhodes
Associate Dean, International Education & Senior International Officer,
College of Extended & International Education
Director, Center for Global Education
California State University at Dominguez Hills
When a representative from an international institution comes to campus or a high level administrator travels abroad, one of the concerns that comes up is if a new agreement will be discussed or even agreed to and what will it take to effectively implement on all the involved campuses?
When I first started in the international higher education field in 1988, agreements between U.S. colleges and universities were created in person with a hand shake along with a general written agreement with very few details about how collaborations were to take place. Many of those handshakes and agreements weren’t intended to result in any formal collaboration, just a friendly statement that “it would be nice to collaborate across borders.”
International offices had a difficult time getting the attention of legal counsel, risk managers and student affairs administrators to help in identifying the critical issues that needed to be written into agreements. There were no colleges or universities with a staff member focused on health and safety issues.
Times have changed. Today, deciding to enter into international agreements—that take into account U.S. law and international law issues—is a complex bargain. Not only are there institutional agreements, but now many U.S. colleges and universities have an increasing number of permanent study abroad locations and full branch campuses where students can earn a full degree.
Leo Van Cleve, State University Dean, International and Summer Programs, California State University System provides a good perspective on this change for U.S. and international universities:
As internationalization has grown in importance at many universities, it has moved from the periphery of campus administration to a regular part of policy concerns. One place where this has been particularly evident is in institutional agreements. Where once universities conducted their business based on a handshake and personal relationship, now the agreement requires review and approval at the highest level. This has made those agreements at once more comprehensive and more legal sounding as elements are added to cover everything from student support, to privacy, to logos and brands. In my interactions with colleagues from other countries I see this not only as a U.S. only phenomena but one that appears in other countries as well.
Harvey Charles, Ph.D., Vice Provost for International Education at Northern Arizona University and the current President of the Association of International Education Administrators provides his perspective on the changes taking place in higher education and the increased complexity of international agreements as well:
The development and management of agreements between US colleges and universities and their foreign counterparts has becomes quite complicated and time consuming over the past few years. Much of this, of course, is attributable to the rise of globalization as the most dominant phenomenon characterizing 21st century relations and higher education’s response to it. Be it driven by the global growth in international student mobility, the increase in global scholarly collaboration or simply in the quest for global rankings, institutional agreements have become a central device to facilitate international relationships. These agreements have become, not only more significant, but also more fraught as many of these relationships involve a considerable amount of financial and other kinds of resources. Litigation by students and faculty arising from difficult experiences abroad from assault up to and even including death has become a big worry of colleges and universities regarding international relationship. In other instances, there is a real desire to avoid embarrassing and even costly outcomes that may involve the loss of significant investments or damage to the brand arising from an acrimonious parting of ways. It is therefore not surprising that many institutions for which international engagement is an institutional priority ensure that they have appropriate legal counsel on their staff, or at a minimum, have access to the best legal advice to take them through what is often uncharted waters. There is no question that the leading universities of the 21st century will be deeply engaged in international relationships with partner universities around the world. What is just as much an imperative, however, is that such relationships be governed by agreements that minimize the complexity and confusion that may sometimes emerge, that ensures the safety and security of all participants, that enhances the chances that the mutually agreed upon goals of the relationship are met and that allows participating institutions to achieve net gains from their collaborative projects.
As noted earlier, this increase in complexity of international relationships and international agreements is not something that has only happened in the U.S. International universities have also expanded the complexity of their international agreements. Tom Howard, Director of HES (Australia and Europe) has been representing various universities in Australia and Europe and supporting their relationships with U.S. universities for many years. According to Tom:
When I began my career in international education, things were a bit different when it came to signing partnership agreements than they are today. I worked early on for a study abroad provider, and when we decided we wanted to implement a partnership program, I wrote the agreement, and ran it by a close friend who is an attorney – purely to make sure nothing was ‘glaringly’ wrong with it. Few of our early partners needed to submit it to legal counsel, and virtually none, as I recall, had a risk management officer to look it over either. When Australian universities first began to engage with the US study abroad community en masse (circa 1989), it didn’t take much more than a handshake and a one page MOU for student mobility to take root and begin. Fast forward ahead some 25 years, and ‘standard’ agreements are now many pages long, and often need to be vetted by more than one administrator on campus. In addition to Australia, I currently work (and have worked through my career) with universities and in both the UK and Europe, and the situation in each regarding contracts is similar. In short, the entire process for contracts between US and overseas institutions has, for the most part, caught up with the rise in things like risk management, mobility balances, and transparency - key factors in both the US and other educational systems, and, in particular, in study abroad and exchange.
Many colleges and universities have centralized the process for all international agreements and have a designated official on campus to process requests for new agreements and to publish those that exists. The University of Colorado at Boulder has a website dedicated to international agreements: https://www.colorado.edu/oie/global-cu/international-partnerships. According to Lawrence H. Bell, Executive Director, International Education, University of Colorado Boulder:
Agreements and exchange documents can be a major headache for an international office. The most important step is to get a formal approval process (including a way to review and remove no longer useful documents) in place with the buy-in of the important stakeholders. The Chancellor's/President's office is one of the linchpins to success of the process since most MOUs or agreements require a signature at that level ... and that level can help in controlling lower-level signature authority.
Another chief ally of the international office is the office of the university counsel. Legal help in drafting templates and in reviewing non-standard documents is critical to ensuring that unintended legal or financial entanglements are avoided. If you have a process that is on-line and contains templates for all to review and use, and a timely review process, you will be assured of a higher level of compliance by faculty and staff in academic departments. A helpful part of having the process online is knowing that you will have less chance of two faculty or two departments attempting to create a program with a single overseas partner (Through personal experience, I can tell you that it is possible to have an embarrassed President, committed to signing an agreement with an institution that you already have a signed agreement with from a different department.)
All it takes is one badly worded document to create havoc either financially or administratively for the entire campus. A department may be signing a document that promises an exchange of students that the international office is certainly aware is not financially sustainable, or an agreement offering classes to students from another school tuition-free.
Having an easily available, clear, easy to follow process that has been vetted by campus stakeholders is the key to avoiding difficulties with agreements, MOUs, and exchanges.
Since 1998, the Center for Global Education’s SAFETI Clearinghouse (www.globaled.us/safeti) has continued to provide additional resources to support institutional health and safety support. NAFSA: Association of International Educators and the Forum on Education Abroad have provided additional resources to support enhanced risk management support for international agreements. The U.S. Department of State through the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have provided additional collaboration and support for university international efforts. U.S. legal concerns impacting study abroad are many, including the Clery Act, FERPA Privacy issues, and Title IX sexual harassment and assault issues. The Interorganizational Task Force on Safety and Responsibility in Study Abroad provides a list of responsibilities for institutions as well. As noted in previous statements, concerns about institutional liability, health and safety, and risk management have been drivers in increased complexity in international agreements.
As the International Risk Analyst in the Office of Global Initiatives at the University of Arizona, Laura Provencher is one of the full-time college and university staff working on policy, risk management and health and safety as their full-time role. According to Laura:
Clarifying expectations and creating shared understandings are important components to facilitating safe exchanges for our students and faculty. Optimally I recommend that official agreements include a commitment to:
Specify communication protocols;
Work together to identify and mitigate potential risks to exchange students and faculty;
Determine structure(s) to facilitate support of students and faculty and incident response;
Plan and train for emergencies; and
Institute support of students before, during, and after travel.
Many institutions are not currently equipped to thoroughly provide for each of these in an agreement, but the openness of the institution and apparent commitment to work towards these requirements is critical. I recommend that parties use the agreement process as a point from which to create a shared understanding of what is reasonable to expect from each party. The process of entering an agreement is an excellent place to assess an institution's availability and responsiveness. If an institution is extremely difficult to get hold of and unreliable, it may not be reasonable to expect communication patterns to improve during an emergency. Of the above recommendations, creating the mechanisms for reliable communication is the most important.
It is important for each institution to take international agreements seriously. It is important to clarify what is expected of each institution and provide that information in clear language and reflect the laws and regulations in each country and region. Along with laws and regulations, it is also important to reflect risk management and health and safety concerns, including the types of issues raised in documents like the Forum on Education Abroad Standards and Code of Ethics as well as the Interorganizational Task Force on Safety and Responsibility in Study Abroad. At times, fulfilling a U.S. institutional concerns may conflict with concerns of partner institutions for concerns like sharing information considered private abroad, but considered critical to share for a U.S. institution. To overcome some of these concerns, the agreements are not limited to those between institutions, but also matching documents that students may need to sign, which in the case of privacy issues, may allow the international university to share information that otherwise would not be shared with the U.S. campus.
It is important to support collaboration across campus to develop appropriate institutional agreements and to maintain clear and open dialogue with international partners to support growth in responsible and effective international engagement.