Global Career Compass
Leveraging Education Abroad for Student Career Development & Employability
Featured Consultant: Elspeth Jones, UK International Educator
I’d like to call attention to the body of research and writing of Prof. Elspeth Jones. Until July 2011, she was Professor of the Internationalization of Higher Education and International Dean at Leeds Metropolitan University. She has focused on a great many themes of concern to me -especially in relation to international education and employability and internationalization of the curriculum, among many other topics.
See Elspeth’s publications at this link on her website: http://www.elspethjones.com/Selected_Publications.html
NAFSA: A Global Commons & The Growing Inequality of Access to International Education
It’s the week after the world’s largest gathering of international educators in St. Louis, MO. Over 8,500 professionals -representing academic institutions and both for-profit and nonprofit organizations – and supporting businesses from 100 nations spent a week sharing insights, research and creative new program initiatives with one another. If you do not know about NAFSA, go to http://www.nafsa.org; for those readers who are members, no need to read on….I’ve been attending the annual conference of the association since 1977 and it really is amazing to see the growth and diversity of international educators in the network. Stepping back from the preparation for my sessions and apart from the joy of seeing old friends and meeting new colleagues, the meeting is uplifting and energizing.
The event pulls together professionals representing every continent and offers dialogue with educators working on critical issues which impact tens of thousands of students attending colleges and universities. A one-stop global commons. An event which highlights efforts to provide students with opportunities to build intercultural skills, study abroad, serve and volunteer in communities, learn a new language, and travel.
However, despite my optimism about the work we all do, I am very concerned about the inequality of access to international educational opportunity which exists in the U.S. (this may be true in Canada, Australia and Europe but I do not have the data). Here, of approximately 20 million students enrolled in higher ed institutions each year, we only send about 275,000 students to study abroad —this is like the Occupy movement’s focus on the 99% vs. the 1% (close anyway)…As the world’s employers seek more and more talent with international experience and skills gained through such experience, where does this leave those students NOT going abroad? While campuses are making efforts to provide intercultural learning opportunities for students in local communities, there is a growing divide for those who can and those who cannot leave the U.S. to study, work and serve. And let’s not forget about the millions of minority students at our community colleges — students of color are vastly under-represented among those who go abroad.
Translating Study Abroad for the Job Search
This week’s webinar for NAFSA attracted nearly 1,000 study abroad and career service professionals from both campuses and “provider” organizations in the U.S, Canada and Australia. My colleagues, Vera Chapman from Colgate, and Curtiss Stevens, The University of Texas-Austin, provided listeners with concrete program models designed to assist students in pre-departure orientation sessions, in-country analysis and reflection during time abroad, and in unpacking what was learned upon return to campus.
The large number of participants tells me that there is a great deal of interest on campus to better integrate the student advising process, prepare students to build concrete skills and develop workforce competencies while abroad and enable students to better articulate what they have learned as they prepare for job interviews and re-edit their resumes to include their time spent studying abroad.
For readers not in the study abroad field, see a new NAFSA publication – also in e-book, Internships, Service Learning and Volunteering Abroad: Successful Models and Best Practices, edited by myself, William Nolting, Cheryl Matherly and Debbie Donohue. One of the chapters is on Career Impact and Global Workforce Development. Find the PDF at http://www.nafsa.org/interactive/core/orders/product.aspx?catid=2&prodid=422
New NAFSA Publication on Education Abroad Best Practices
The title of this new volume is: Internships, Service Learning, Volunteering Abroad: Successful Models and Best Practices, edited by William Nolting, Debbie Donohue, Cheryl Matherly and myself. It will be available as an e-book shortly.
From the Introduction: “We wrote this book as a guide for advisors in education abroad, career, volunteer, or service-learning offices who consult with students, as well as those who administer work abroad, internships, service-learning, or volunteer programs”…each of the eight chapters has extensive citations so that readers can pursue additional and current research and related texts. There are selected case studies which highlight the practical issues faced by program administrators in each category of experiential learning.
From the perspective of this blog, I’d call your attention to the chapter in which I was the lead writer: Career Impact and Global Workforce Development.
A lot of content in this chapter is found in my other writing along with that of Cheryl Matherly. As we write in the chapter: “Our assumption is that successfully preparing global-ready graduates is not solely the domain of colleges and universities; rather, there is a new rationale for collaboration with employers in all sectors who can measurably contribute to the applied knowledge and skill development of students.”
Employability, Education Abroad & False Choices
According to data collected from the International Institute of Education (IIE), only 274,000 students out of more than 20 million enrolled in post-secondary education studied abroad in 2010-11. Read that statistic again. I decided to take a step back to consider whom we are talking about when discussing the topics/themes of my blog. These numbers tell us something not too often talked about in all the current writing about the mission of the university and whether we “taint” that mission when we talk about issues of employability, rates of employment upon graduation, match of major to prospects for employment, and skills which employers value when hiring.
When these issues are framed solely around the tiny percent of U.S. undergrads who study abroad, we are, in fact, really talking about and expressing concern for the impact of international education upon a small class of American undergrads — and they happen to be mostly white, female and shall we say, of a certain socio-economic background. There is no disputing this fact. Further, when looking at the IIE stats, you see that the breakdown of numbers also shows how few institutions are represented as being major players in the arena of international education : there is a “Top 25” list of sending institutions; and a “Top 40” list of Phd, MA and undergraduate institutions –and these few are a small percent of the 4,100 institutions of higher ed in America.
I came to think about these numbers because of a new piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education,http://chronicle.com/article/Employers-Want-Broadly/138453/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en , ” Employers Want Broadly Educated New Hires, Survey Finds.” Who are these employers and who is interested in the advocacy of the broad liberal arts education they seek in their hires? The Association of American Colleges and Universities reported on a survey of 318 employers, however only 160 of this group signed on – along with 107 college presidents – to a new “compact” to help the country better understand the importance of a ’21st-century liberal-arts education.’ Among those things they will advocate for is “college as a path to both career success and civic responsibility.” I think it is fair to say that these same presidents would support international education as a part of their students’ liberal arts education.
But again think about these numbers. What is the student community whom they represent in our society? Who is framing a broader compact and advocating for the majority of students attending college and university in the U.S.? In other posts, I’ve raised the issue of equality of access to international education. I remain very concerned about this issue. It’s not enough to advocate raising the number of students who participate in study abroad, and not even enough to advocate for greater diversity within this cohort of students. We need to advocate “international education for ALL.” We need a conversation about the democratization of the international education agenda on our campuses.
NAFSA Webinar: Helping Students Translate Study Abroad to the Job Search
I’ll be presenting along with my colleagues Dr. Vera Chapman, Colgate University and Curtiss Oneil Stevens, University of Texas at Austin.
Register Now: Tuesday, May 07, 2013, 3:00-4:30 PM EST http://nafsa.org/Attend_Events/Webinars/Helping_Students_Translate__Study_Abroad__for_the_Job_Search/
Research indicates employers broadly value the knowledge and skills gained through international experiences. Yet students and their advisors often struggle with how to articulate the experience in terms that are relevant to prospective employers. How do you help students elevate the “study abroad” experience beyond a bullet point on a resume or an anecdote at the interview?
Hear from study abroad and career office professionals who are collaborating to assist students in connecting the study abroad experience with their career aspirations.
OBJECTIVES
The webinar will provide participants with:
- Research findings on what employers are looking for
- Strategies for coaching students to set career-related goals for their study abroad experience and then demonstrate its value
- Ways to integrate career development and study abroad programming
- Examples of practical tools to guide student job search preparation
Students Do Not Connect Study Abroad Experience to Employability & Employers Expect Higher Education Institutions to Help Make the Connection
Two recent surveys help explain the quandry employers have found themselves in for several years when it comes to the mismatch between their need for talent and the recent graduates they interview, who may have international experience on their resumes, but who cannot make a solid connection between being abroad and the competencies which the employer values in a new hire. This is precisely what I’ve been saying and writing about in recent years. And it is a dis-connect which impacts not only the U.S. workforce, but resonates around the world for employers based both in the North and South. On the other hand, it appears that not all employers – or at least their HR managers- place the same weight on whether or not study abroad is valued as an experience to develop necessary intercultural skills [a finding that contradicts the fact that overwhelming majorities of employers state this is a skill in high demand among their workers].
A Chronicle of Higher Education survey in conjunction with American Public Media’s Marketplace, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Employment-Mismatch/137625/?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en#id=overview, finds that 50% of employers (over 700 out of a sample of 50,000 responded in the U.S.) in their survey “…had trouble finding recent graduates qualified to fill positions at their company or organization. Nearly a third gave colleges just fair to poor marks for producing successful employees. And they dinged bachelor’s-degree holders for lacking basic workplace proficiencies, like adaptability, communication skills, and the ability to solve complex problems.”
And there is this survey conducted by IPSOS in cooperation with the British Council and Booz Allen Hamilton. IPSOS surveyed HR managers in nine nations for the report, Culture at Work: The value of intercultural skills in the workplace, http://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/documents/culture-at-work-research.pdf.
As summarized on an IPSOS blog:
Employers feel that candidates require the skills necessary to navigate this multicultural environment – “intercultural skills” – and that these skills are currently lacking in the current labor market. Employers require employees with intercultural skills to keep teams running efficiently, build trust with clients, and develop relationships with new clients. The risks of having employees who do not possess strong intercultural skills are miscommunication and conflicts within teams, as well as loss of clients and damage to the company’s global reputation. Despite this finding, less than 10% of U.S. HR managers believe study abroad “should be encouraged to improve intercultural skills [perhaps few of these staff ever studied abroad themselves!].
What these reports tell me is that academic institutions that support international education and who, in fact, have articulated internationalization policies, need to do more to bridge the gap between student needs and employer expectations in the design and structure of their study abroad programs. Study abroad and career service advisors, in particular, need to assist students to see the connection between their time abroad and the value that employers place on skills and competencies they develop while away from the U.S. This bridge needs to be constructed with the needs of employers in mind and with the support of campus faculty and policy-makers.
Is College the Wrong Place to Prepare for Work?
I’m thinking about this question as the Chronicle of Higher Education writes about a piece reviewed in the NY Times: http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2013/02/21/are-career-oriented-majors-a-waste-of-a-4-year-higher-education/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
One-third of new programs [created at four year institutions] in the last decade were added in just two broad fields: health professions (where credential inflation is rampant) and military technologies/applied sciences (probably a reaction to the September 11th attacks). The 1990s saw similar growth in the number of majors. Indeed, nearly four in 10 majors in the Education Department data didn’t exist in 1990.
Any of us would recognize those new majors by just glancing at the list of undergraduate programs at almost any college these days: sustainability, athletic training, sports management, new media, gaming, homeland security, and so on. This trend, which has persisted for five decades, has been bemoaned by some as a flight from the arts and sciences to the practical arts.
This question has seemed to pop up on a regular basis throughout the period of the great recession – and particularly as statistics surface indicating that there is a great deal of under-employment among college educated graduates. I’d guess that even if one majored in what appeared to be a sure-fire job-producing major like “homeland security,” that there would be a long line to get behind for every opening in the federal DHS. We have more citizens going to college and therefore, more students seeking to major in those job-related, skill-building, career-focused employment-generating jobs.
But as I’ve pointed out before, this is a new question in our society only as it relates to four-year colleges and as the liberal arts is under fire for simply producing thoughtful and analytic graduates absent other “hard” skills in demand in the workforce [think STEM fields]. Our community colleges have been producing generations of skilled workers in high-demand fields for quite a long time. The question at hand is how far our society must go to tinker with our more traditional college majors -aka English, Sociology, Anthropology, Music…add your own – so that we reduce the number of bartenders, taxi drivers, waitresses, retail clerks,,,add your own…with college degrees biding their time until they perhaps save enough money to –you guessed it – return for the MA degree they need to really start their career.
Importance of College for Rural Family in China: “…Only Knowledge Changes Your Fate”
I was very moved by this story in the NY Times which chronicles the sacrifice of a rural family to allow their only child to apply to college: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/business/in-china-families-bet-it-all-on-a-child-in-college.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
You can see a slide show here: Rural Chinese Family Sacrifices to Send Child to College
But high education costs coincide with slower growth of the Chinese economy and surging unemployment among recent college graduates. Whether young people like Ms. Wu find jobs on graduation that allow them to earn a living, much less support their parents, could test China’s ability to maintain rapid economic growth and preserve political and social stability in the years ahead.
The story makes clear that the enormous sacrifice of the family, particularly the father who has worked in a backbreaking job at a coal mine for many years, may not realize their dreams for their child –that she will have a better life which will allow her to take care of her parents in their old age…The child does just pass the exam allowing her to attend a polytechnic – akin to a community college – and she is majoring in a popular major called “logistics.” The story points out the irony that Chinese students who do graduate college are “four times as likely to be unemployed as young people who attended only elementary school, because factory jobs are more plentiful than office jobs [see my earlier post on this issue of college grads not wanting to get their hands dirty].”
Parents everywhere want their children to succeed and lead a better life — it’s a universal aspiration. This story makes it clear that China, despite its economic boom, is facing a future where those who are poorest, with the least resources, with the least support from the state – and yet who strive in the same way as their urban counterparts to lead a better life – face a very uncertain future. At this story’s end, the child’s mother is quoted as saying: “…What if she can’t get a job after we have spent so much on education.”
The Cost of Working Your Way Through College
This lengthy NY Times article focuses a spotlight on the very difficult issue of how many undergraduates are forced to work long hours to either minimize their post-graduation debt burden and also meet their annual tuition and related expenses: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/business/college-costs-battled-a-paycheck-at-a-time.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The piece highlights a student working to pay the $80,000 it costs to attend Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. Even at this rural institution, the rise in tuition for residents forces difficult choices for those who do not come from well-off families.
The notion of working to pay off college debt has long been a part of American higher education. I’ve known friends going to college at night while working full-time jobs in past years. But the rising tuition costs coupled with the slow recovery out of the recession have placed new burdens on students who must enter college with a clear vision about the end-game. How will my interests and skills, tied to my choice of a major, enable me to find employment within a reasonable period of time after I graduate? Community colleges have long been the place where the curriculum is tied to vocational choices –but now there is a new burden on our four-year institutions.
I’m worried that the economy will, de facto, increasingly segregate students by allowing those who can afford it, to major in the liberal arts, while narrowing the options for other students to more “practical” academic disciplines where there is an easier linkage to be made to an industry or sector hiring when they get to the end of their senior year.
Global Career Compass 