Global Career Compass
Leveraging Education Abroad for Student Career Development & Employability
Study Abroad Dims Job Prospects for Japanese Students
I’d been meaning to comment on this NYT article which appeared May 30: http://www.n2011, ytimes.com/2012/05/30/business/global/as-global-rivals-gain-ground-corporate-japan-clings-to-cautious-ways.html?pagewanted=all My only experience in Japan was as a member of the second Fulbright international education administrator program in 1987. I was aware that numbers of Japanese students studying in the US had dropped in recent years. I think the importance of watching numbers has become linked with both the globalization of student flows and the global economic downturn.
And so this story is tied to the specific impact of studying abroad on the job prospects for Japanese students upon their return home [and directly contradicts the narrative of the positive impact of study abroad for American students – as viewed by U.S. employers – in their job searches]. The article states, “..a shrinking portion of Japanese college students is seeking higher education in the West. At the same time, Japan’s regional [economic] rivals, China, South Korea and India, are sending increasing numbers of students overseas…”
There is empirical evidence to support the negative view of study abroad attributed by Japanese companies. In a survey of 1,000 companies by Disco, a Japanese recruiting company, conducted in June, 2011, “fewer than a quarter said they planned to hire Japanese applicants who had studied abroad.”
Bi-lingual Japanese students with international experience are more likely to find employment with multinationals or American firms doing business in Japan.
There is a reference to the improved stature of Japanese universities as also playing a role in this changing demographic picture – maybe the bloom is off the rose as to the perceived need to attend a prestigious U.S. college or university. I’ve always felt there was too much pressure placed on international students to attend so-called “elite” institutions. So while this is not by itself a bad thing, in terms of the diversity of intercultural interaction on U.S. campuses, the absence of Japanese students is very unfortunate. A decline in exposure to other cultures fosters the isolation of Japanese youth and young professionals at a time when globalization calls for greater cross-cultural skills and intercultural competencies.
On Developing Ethical Inter-Institutional Linkages
This is an exceptionally honest account in the CHE Worldwise [http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/building-partnerships-in-an-unequal-world/29699?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en] – from the perspective of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of research, innovation, and advancement at the University of Johannesburg – of the practice of Western academic institutions seeking to further internationalization of their campuses through partnerships with universities in the South or developing world. He makes this statement:
...It is well known, for instance, that study-abroad partnerships are often unequal and defined largely by one-way traffic of students. They have essentially become a means for some universities in the Global South to supplement their inadequate resources, and run the risk of skewing expenditure away from immediate institutional needs. Should we be comfortable with this, or should we be collectively thinking about ways to make this an equitable experience from which all of our students can benefit?
And the answer is? The thrust of the essay is about the often unequal manner in which representatives from Western institutions seek to negotiate agreements. Sometimes from a take it leave it style which belies the needs of the partner. The ethics of internationalization practices is somewhat lost in the frequent analysis of numbers – stats on the flow of international students around the world, stats on virtually every aspect of study abroad…but behind these numbers is the obvious dilemma of the inequality of resources and infrastructure . Should “we” be comfortable with this…?
Inequalities in Global Labor Market-Where Will College-Educated Talent Come From?
Interesting report from McKinsey Global Institute is cited in this Economist essay: http://www.economist.com/node/21556974.
Despite great efforts to improve schools and universities, workers in the emerging world are less educated than those elsewhere. Some 35% in China and a stunning 70% in India have no more than a primary education. Yet this will change: China and India, McKinsey predicts, will be the world’s main source for skilled workers over the next two decades. The two countries alone will add 184m college graduates to the global labour market. As a result, the centre of gravity of human capital and innovation is likely to shift towards Asia.
Given the tremendous rise in the of students from China & India now studying the U.S., it’s a safe assumption that our educational resources will be responsible for supplying talent to these two nations – and to other nations in need of skilled workers – for years to come.
McKinsey estimates that over the next decade rich countries and China will need 40m more college-educated workers than they will be able to produce. At the same time, employers across the world may find themselves with 90m more low-skilled workers than they need. This glut will drag down wages, worsening inequality.
What does this mean for the international education community? For one thing, it seems to me these trends point to the urgent need for rapid improvement of education systems in the developing world – and in particular, for China and India to widen access to quality education in their systems. I am aware that both countries are devoting more resources to this end; however, until and unless they succeed, it means that education systems in the developed world will remain a magnet for international students from the developing world, and in particular, for China and India, well into the future.
NAFSA Grooms Young Professionals
I’ve been a member of the Association for a long time and at the Houston conference two weeks ago , it was especially exciting to find that of the more than 8,000 attendees, over 2,000 were there for the first time! So while a bit different from my posts to-date, I wanted to say how energized I was from my conversations with several young professionals whom I talked with. NAFSA has created a new structure to foster “formal” mentoring relationships during the conference week.
At a time when the global workforce is so fragile in many fields, I’d say our field is strong. Of course, in the U.S., public higher education has and continues to be at the mercy of weakened state economies. A relatively small number of senior staff at academic institutions -along with representatives of private sector companies providing support to the education abroad community, attend numerous conferences throughout the year. But for newcomers, those just out of grad school or close to completing their studies, international students interested in finding a niche opportunity in their home country’s higher ed community, and professionals transitioning into the education field, attending a major global conference like NAFSA presents a special opportunity. It’s the one meeting in a year that these young professionals look forward to with much anticipation. And because the meeting is so large, they must carefully and purposefully devise a networking strategy to meet individuals and network with institutions and organizations –good practice for their job searches in the “real” world!
As corny as it sounds, NAFSA fosters a feeling of being part of an exciting interactive and generous global community for a week – a kind of professional bubble which supports easy conversation, inter-generational networking and exchange of information and the sharing of best practices in every area of our professional lives.
It’s really an amazing experience to be in a public space that is such a global commons. I came away, at a time when more and more colleagues of a certain generation are now retiring, feeling that the future is bright for the international education community. NAFSA is a great incubator of ideas and is setting the stage for the emergence of new leaders around the world…
IIE Report on Expanding International Internships/Work Abroad Opportunities for U.S. STEM Students
Download this summary of a recent workshop which I participated in sponsored by IIE in Washington DC: http://www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Publications/Publications-and-Reports/IIE-Bookstore/Learn-by-Doing. The full workshop details and a collection of PowerPoint presentations, along with short bios of presenters, can be found at http://www.iie.org/en/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Events/2012/STEM-Internships-Workshop.
The report highlights: According to the 2011 IIE Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, 3.9 percent of U.S. students who received credit for study or work abroad were engineers, while math and computer science students made up only 1.5 percent of U.S. students studying abroad. These two majors represented the smallest share of U.S. students abroad, other than those majoring in agriculture. While close to 10 percent of U.S. undergraduates study abroad before graduation, less than 4 percent of engineering students participate in study abroad programs; as a result, very few are gaining the global education they will need to be competitive professionals in the global workforce.
This low number of engineering grads who have not had any international experience is of consequence due to the globalization of the engineering profession. I’d highly recommend the book, Going the Extra Mile: University of Rhode Island Engineers in the Global Workplace, by John Grandin, Rockland Press, 2011 for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of the impact of the innovative URI International Engineering Program.
Africa’s Best & Brightest Leave at Alarming Rate
Ahead of my fall sojourn to Zimbabwe to discuss the role that career services can play in preparing universities to better advise students, this post is quite sobering: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=201205291517447le68&query=okereke. It cites a World Bank study showing that between 1991 and 2010, the number of students enrolled in higher education rose annually at a rate of 16% – from 2.7 million to almost 13 million. Yet public expenditure on higher ed grew only by 6% in this same period. The author, Dr. Chukwumerije Okereke, states: “…unless drastic action is taken, most African economies will not be able to produce young people with the requisite technical knowledge and skills to sustain their economic growth.” He goes on to say that in lieu of being able to fill jobs with their own skilled and well trained students, that “Africa spends about $4billion annually to recruit and pay well over 100,000 expatriates to work on the continent…” Why? Okereke states that 20,000 professionals leave Africa annually — and here he points a finger st UK universities [where he lives and teaches] which “propelled by the need to increase their international profile and find money to plug the gap from falling budgets, have invented schemes to entice some of the best brains in Africa.” Sound familiar to U.S. readers? While I certainly do not see U.S. institutions targeting specific countries in the developing world [in the case of China, the country’s families are speaking through their checkbooks], there is a link between increasing globalization of the higher education market, brain drain and economic development. On this point, Okereke states that only “one of every three students who travel abroad for studies returns to Africa…while Africa increasingly relies on Chinese expatriates for its own development.”
Colleges Get Career-Minded: Some View Issue of Employability as “Mission-Critical”
This story in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention: http://intranews.sns.it/intranews/20120523/MI43141.PDF . The thrust is that the transformative [my word] economic downturn has forced colleges -especially those with a liberal arts curriculum at the core of their mission- to consider and/or devise coursework and programs tied to practical workplace-related experience. Or said in another way, “blending liberal and applied learning.” Are we supposed to be shocked with the very idea that institutions should be concerned with the readiness of their graduates to enter the workforce? According to this article, “some schools [how many is that?]” are moving forward to make career development a “mission critical” aspect of the college experience.
I’d like to know where those institutions are where the future careers of their students are not considered, on any level, “mission critical.” I agree with those who are wary of pushing too close to the line which separates the liberal arts from purely pre-professional training; however, I also believe that the idea of college as learning within cloistered ivory towers is a thing of the past for the majority of college-age students. I disagree with the President of Wesleyan College, Michael Roth, who is quoted as saying, “When people start talking about employability, what they’re really talking about is conformity.” Really? It’s time to get real about the needs of most students who need to purposefully build bridges to their career interests throughout their four years – and institutions can do this without compromising their core academic values. It may take greater imagination and innovation to develop these bridges at Wesleyan…
Does Debt Affect Career Choice?
Here’s the Canadian perspective based on new research: http://higheredstrategy.com/category/employment.
Seems that whether or not students had a debt burden after graduation did not directly alter their career choices –meaning they did not only look for employment with high earning potential as the principal criteria for accepting a job. The Canadian research, by a Toronto firm called Higher Education Strategy Associates, found that “… as they head out into the workforce there’s little evidence that a preoccupation with earnings is, at present at least, a major outcome of student indebtedness.” It’s not clear whom they sampled to reach their conclusion.
For a more complex analysis of how debt does and does not impact student career decision-making, see this 2007 research: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13117.pdf
Wipro Launches New “India Gateway” Internship Program
This initiative is the kind of university-business venture which I discuss in my SAGE Handbook chapter on “Employer Perspectives on International Education” http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wipro-to-launch-india-gateway-internship-2012-05-17
This one-year UK-India collaborative training program will involve a three-month rigorous technology induction course followed by a six month on-the-job training with Wipro teams. In the last three months, the students will work with live project teams. The course — a mix of classroom and practical training — is aimed at making students employable anywhere on the globe.
What student would not want this experience as a gateway to entering the global workforce?
Headlines Tell All-What’s a Job Got to Do With It?
” Get Rich U” in the April 20 New Yorker; “Questioning College” – a letter in response to New Yorker piece by VP, Student Affairs of John Tyler Community College; “Vocation of Exploration? Pondering the Purpose of College, ” NYT, 6-5-12; ” Jobs Few, Grads Flock to Unpaid Internships,” NYT, 6-6-12; “The Human Disaster of Unemployment,” NYT, 6-13-12; and finally, “A Generation Hobbled by College Debt,” NYT, 6-5-12 [this article resulted in a major embarrassment for the Time when it was pointed out that their statement that “ninety-four per cent of students who earn a bachelor’s degree borrow to pay for higher education” was not true—it’s actually “only” 66%].
What are these stories telling us? What’s the relevance for us international educators? Simply that the transformation that has taken place in our economy since 2008 has led to a questioning of one of the singular assumptions of American life: get an education–get ahead–get a job–be successful. None of these assumptions can easily be made now…nor are they as true, perhaps, as they once were.
Global Career Compass 