[lg policy] International Offices Dig In Amid Budget Cuts

Wed Jun 2 15:17:10 UTC 2010

International Offices Dig In Amid Budget Cuts
By Karin Fischer

Kansas City, Mo.

Fiscal woes have hit colleges' international offices, forcing many to
slash spending, trim staff rosters, and curb overseas travel. The
cutbacks come as a growing number of academic leaders—as well as
students, parents, and prospective employers—have embraced the belief
that colleges must produce more graduates with strong international
skills. So, rather than reduce services, many in the field are being
asked to do more with less. More than a few sessions at the annual
meeting of Nafsa: Association of International Educators here this
week are focused on creative but not costly approaches to
international work: using social media, like Facebook and Twitter, to
recruit abroad; tapping student groups to expand programming on
campus; working more closely with other administrative offices to
reduce overhead in study abroad.

"We're all trying to figure out how to do big-impact programs on small
budgets," says Jennie R. Woolf, a presenter at the conference and a
program coordinator at the University of California at Los Angeles's
Office of International Students and Scholars. Some experts, however,
say colleges should use the budgetary downturn to rethink their
strategies toward international education, not just to make changes
around the margins. "We have a tendency just to tighten up a little,
to cut here, to cut there," says Margaret Heisel, director of the
Center for Capacity Building in Study Abroad, a project of Nafsa and
the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. "But I want
people to be jolted into looking at the fundamentals of what we do."

Of Surrogates and Skype

Still, many presenters say their strategies reflect a need to quickly
absorb cuts, sometimes in the middle of the academic year. Ann Marie
Gogerty, a program coordinator in the office of admissions at Iowa
State University, surveyed 16 of her colleagues at other American
colleges about the impact of the recession on their strategies for
international-student recruitment. Almost every institution, says Ms.
Gogerty, who will share her findings during a panel on Wednesday, has
seen an uptick in the number of international students. But "when it
comes to budgets," she says, "it's a different ballgame." Some
colleges have banded together in consortia to share the costs of
marketing and recruiting. Iowa State, for example, is one of 18 two-
and four-year colleges that formed StudyIowa, a nonprofit group
promoting the state as a destination for foreign students. Others
surveyed by Ms. Gogerty have turned to third-party agents to help
identify and attract students when their own staff members are unable
to travel overseas.

Mardi Klein, director of international admissions at Long Island
University's Brooklyn campus, says she relies on parents and alumni to
act as surrogates abroad. The university's graduates often are
effective recruiters because prospective students look up to them as
success stories, says Ms. Klein, who will speak on a panel on Thursday
about low-cost ways to draw foreign students. In regions of the world
where parents play a strong role in students' education, like Latin
America, she adds, talking with fellow parents in their own language
can help sway family decisions.

Ms. Klein also recommends that colleges look close to home when
recruiting far away. She is working with local churches to connect
with congregations in the Caribbean, a target market for LIU-Brooklyn.
In addition, she reaches out to students attending English-language
programs in New York City who might have the academic skills to
transfer to her institution.

"Don't overlook your backyard," she says.

Both Ms. Klein and Ms. Gogerty say they use technology in recruitment,
placing advertisements on Facebook and using Skype, the free Internet
telephone service, to conduct student interviews. But both women
caution that there's no substitute for on-the-ground recruiting. They
recommend that colleges with limited funds be strategic in their trips
overseas.

"There are limits," Ms. Klein says, "to armchair recruiting."

Service on a Shoestring
Budget cuts also affect on-campus programs, both those designed for
foreign students and those meant to give their domestic counterparts a
taste of the world without leaving the campus.

Ms. Woolf, of UCLA, is leading one of several sessions at the Nafsa
conference that will focus on how to offer international services on a
shoestring. Some activities can be offered at minimal cost to
international offices, she says, such as a monthly international
kaffeeklatsch or a Thanksgiving potluck dinner.

Others can be done with sponsorships or by asking students to foot a
nominal fee. For example, UCLA puts on regular "lunch around the
world" events at nearby ethnic restaurants. The restaurateurs
typically waive the bill or charge each student a small amount,
perhaps $5, in exchange for the opportunity to share their culture and
attract potential new customers.

And some programs are simply free, save a little bit of administrative
time, Ms. Woolf says. She cites the success of a new UCLA program
connecting international students and scholars with native English
speakers to allow each to practice foreign-language skills. In its
first year, the Conversation Partners program has matched 300 pairs,
and 90 people are on the waiting list, Ms. Woolf says.

At the University of South Florida, one approach has been to look for
collaborators rather than to try to provide all services alone. Staff
members in the international-affairs office have coordinated with
campus-ministry groups to pick up arriving foreign students at the
airport, says Kari L. Saunders, an international-student adviser and
the organizer of another Nafsa panel. The office also worked with the
Indian-student association to hold a campuswide party for Diwali, a
major Hindu festival.

Rene Sanchez, a student-programs coordinator at South Florida and a
fellow panelist of Ms. Saunders, applies the same philosophy to study
abroad. The university's education-abroad office used to advise
students going overseas about the financial-aid process, he says. Now
he invites student-aid staff members to speak at study-abroad
information sessions. Doing so saves his office time and the cost of
printing financial-aid forms, ensures that students get accurate
information, and has improved the working relationship between the two
offices.

"In the end," he says, "we're probably serving students better."

Other institutions have focused on the economic downturn's impact on
the budgets of students seeking to study abroad. At Wake Forest
University, advisers have begun talking to students early on about the
costs of their study-abroad options and about lower-priced
alternatives, says Steven T. Duke, director of international studies.

Wake Forest also is trying to help students plan wisely when overseas.
The study-abroad office counsels them about international-transaction
fees on credit cards, for example. "We're being much more proactive in
talking with students," Mr. Duke says. "We're trying to help them
grapple with costs from the outset."

Demonstrating Value

Colleges ought not to focus only on the costs of international
programming, Mr. Duke argues, but on its value as well. Wake Forest,
for one, adapted its study-abroad curriculum three years ago to help
students gain a specific set of skills and awareness about interacting
with other cultures—an education in "intercultural competency" that
goes beyond merely speaking a language.

Ms. Heisel, of the Center for Capacity Building in Study Abroad, will
speak on Wednesday about her work in bringing together study-abroad
and budget officers to examine long-term financial models for
international education.

John K. Hudzik, a past president of Nafsa, agrees that educators can't
focus just on short-term "tactical responses" to the current budget
crunch. They ought to ensure that international work is seen as
central to their institutions' strategic direction, says Mr. Hudzik, a
former vice president for global engagement and strategic projects at
Michigan State University.

"If international offices can't do a better job of demonstrating
outcomes," he says, "there's a greater chance they will become
marginalized in the rush for increasingly scarce resources."

http://chronicle.com/article/International-Offices-Dig-In/65740/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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