On Valuing Study Abroad: A Global Mandate for Higher Education

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Global Career Compass

This is a succinct and well written IIE briefing paper – http://www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Publications/Publications-and-Reports/IIE-Bookstore/~/media/Files/Corporate/Publications/Valuing%20Study%20Abroad.ashx – from a conference where the British Academy and the University Council of Modern Languages (UCML) released a joint position statement, Valuing the Year Abroad, that advocated support for funding a third year abroad for British undergraduate students and drew on case studies from a survey they conducted among study abroad alumni. With representatives from the United States, China, and Germany, the international panel was invited to discuss British government and higher education policy on study abroad, and other countries’ policies and best practices in study abroad.

The University of Rhode Island’s five-year program that grants students a BS in engineering and a BA in a foreign language. was cited as a best practice model. In the fourth year of the program, students go abroad to study engineering in the foreign language (German, French, Spanish, or Chinese) of the host country university, and then do a hands-on internship with a company in the host country (for example, one URI student in Germany took engineering classes in German and held an engineering internship at BMW).