New Perspectives
The Forum has continued to field media calls, and today The Christian Science Monitor featured the Forum in "Schools scrutinize and promote study abroad: Concerns over travel 'perks' lead to a clarification of funding behind increasingly popular overseas programs" by Stacy Teicher Khadaroo. The Forum on Education Abroad, which represents colleges and providers that account for about 75 percent of US study abroad, had already approved a set of standards in July and had planned an upcoming ethics conference.
"We welcome scrutiny," says Forum president Brian Whalen. "What's key in all of this is transparency.... People are realizing it's important for everyone in the field to explain what the business practices are ... so students and parents understand them."
The Standards were mentioned in a section on tips for planning to study abroad: The Forum on Education Abroad offers a set of questions you can ask about an organization's policies and standards on their website (http://www.forumea.org/ - click on the "standards" tab at the top and then again on the left). The many topics include preparation before travel, safety, financial aid, and ethics policies.
Labels: Standards
Forum President Interviewed for Podcast
Follow-up Coverage
Today, the Chronicle of Higher Education published follow-up articles: Emerging Benchmarks In response to concerns about the difficulties of evaluating and monitoring study-abroad programs, professionals in the field formed an independent organization, the Forum on Education Abroad, to act as an arbiter of standards. Since it was founded six years ago, the Forum has focused on identifying reputable programs. Using surveys and research, the group devised a set of standards for judging programs, and it just completed a pilot project reviewing the foreign-study offerings of 19 institutions. One of the first things peer reviewers discovered was that many colleges lacked clear goals and rationales for their stated commitment to provide overseas study. Furthermore, aside from anecdotes, the industry has little proof that its programs are accomplishing the lofty goals of global understanding, language proficiency, and good will. "We tend to think of study abroad as a silver bullet — that it's going to make students more academically engaged, better citizens, and help our country in globalization," says Brian Whalen, the Forum's president. "And in some ways, it's very powerful. But we lack precision to our programs, let alone a way to measure what we're accomplishing." In July the Forum released a 14-page list of standards for study-abroad programs. It is a start, according to Mr. Whalen. But these guidelines lack any information on how an institution can evaluate programs run by outsiders. Though the Forum plans to create standards for that soon, the time-intensive process of evaluating other providers will still most likely be done on a case-by-base basis, and will not get much easier.
Labels: Standards
USA Today Airs Debate
USA Today printed two sides of the debate on study abroad: Labels: Standards
Weekend Wrapup
NPR's Legal Affairs, August 17: Lender Inquiry Turns to Study-Abroad DealsInsideHigherEd.com, August 20: The Middlemen of Study Abroad"Colleges have taken very different approaches to their relationships with these outside providers, says Brian Whalen, president and chief executive officer of the Forum on Education Abroad, a group of 250 colleges that has created standards of good practice for study abroad programs. Some that have made strong investments in study abroad have done so largely through working with provider organizations, while others have preferred to either establish a large number of their own programs or directly work with universities abroad. 'It's complex,' says Whalen, 'in terms of where a college or university should put its resources.'" Labels: Standards
The Chronicle Weighs In
In the first of two articles - " As Interest in Studying Abroad Grows, Colleges Struggle With Cost, Quality, and Oversight" by Elizabeth F. Farrell - The Chronicle of Higher Education offers a different perspective on issues in study abroad and cites the Forum's work on Standards. Emerging Benchmarks
In response to concerns about the difficulties of evaluating and monitoring study-abroad programs, professionals in the field formed an independent organization, the Forum on Education Abroad, to act as an arbiter of standards.
Since it was founded six years ago, the Forum has focused on identifying reputable programs. Using surveys and research, the group devised a set of standards for judging programs, and it just completed a pilot project reviewing the foreign-study offerings of 19 institutions. One of the first things peer reviewers discovered was that many colleges lacked clear goals and rationales for their stated commitment to provide overseas study. Furthermore, aside from anecdotes, the industry has little proof that its programs are accomplishing the lofty goals of global understanding, language proficiency, and good will.
"We tend to think of study abroad as a silver bullet - that it's going to make students more academically engaged, better citizens, and help our country in globalization," says Brian Whalen, the Forum's president and chief executive. "And in some ways, it's very powerful. But we lack precision to our programs, let alone a way to measure what we're accomplishing."
In July the Forum released a 14-page list of standards for study-abroad programs. It is a start, according to Mr. Whalen. But those guidelines lack any information on how an institution can evaluate programs run by outsiders. Though the forum plans to create standards for that soon, the time-intensive process of evaluating other providers will still most likely be done on a case-by-base basis, and will not get much easier. Labels: Standards
Response from the Field
InsideHigherEd.com has published an article, entitled " Study Abroad Under Scrutiny" by Elizabeth Redden, that summarized responses to yesterday's New York Times article. It quoted Forum president and CEO Brian Whalen: "When asked about the article Monday, many in international education strongly defended (in industry parlance) "familiarization trips" - international travel intended to enable college officials to evaluate a program where students earn credit abroad - as necessary to ensuring quality. "We're in a field that depends on those familiarization tours as long as they're seen and they're done in an ethical way that's benefiting the students and that's fully transparent and no one is benefiting in a way that is separate from making sure the students are participating and learning from the best possible programs," said Brian Whalen, president and chief executive officer of the Forum on Education Abroad, a group of 250 colleges that has created standards of good practice for study abroad programs....There's a "larger issue," said Whalen of the Forum for Education Abroad, "about colleges and universities needing to take stock of how much study abroad needs to be invested in."
Labels: Standards
Advocating for Forum Members
The Standards Committee, led by Michael Steinberg, have already considered refining the issues of marketing practices, transparency, and ethics in forthcoming third edition of the Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad. As a response to yesterday's New York Times article, the Committee has scheduled a meeting in the fall to continue that work. In the short term, the Forum will be developing and distributing talking points for members to use with campus leadership and the media. Labels: Standards
Growing Media Response
As the media respond to the New York Times article, Forum president and CEO Brian Whalen continues to advocate on behalf of Forum members. He has given full interviews to The Chronicle of Higher Education and InsideHigherEd.com. He has also sent a letter to the editor of the New York Times: Re: "In Study Abroad, Gifts and Money for Universities" - August 13, 2007
While the article fails to accurately describe the academic nature of education abroad and the essential role that providers play in insuring quality programming, it raises issues central to the Forum on Education Abroad's mission. A global organization of nearly 300 institutional members, we represent approximately 70 percent of the U.S. students abroad.
In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission recognized the Forum as the Standards Development Organization for the field of education abroad. Developed by hundreds of professionals from around the world, the Forum's Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad offer an excellent roadmap for developing and managing programs focused on serving students.
The Forum encourages study abroad organizations and institutions to review their policies and practices in light of these Standards, and now it offers the Quality Improvement Program, a voluntary process of rigorous self-study and peer review, to independently assess program improvement.
Sincerely,
Brian Whalen, Ph.D.
President and CEO
The Forum on Education Abroad
Labels: Standards
Talk Back to the NY Times
The New York Times an article today, entitled " In Study Abroad, Gifts and Money for Universities," raising questions about marketing practices in the field of study abroad. What is your response to this story? Share it here! To comment, click the text link indicating the number of comments below the post. A new window will open. You don't need a Blogger account to comment. If you select Other, you can include your name -- or you can choose to comment using Anonymous. Labels: Standards
Standards Featured in InsideHigherEd.com
InsideHigherEd.com, the online news magazine about higher education, featured an article on May 31, 2007 about the Forum's work in standards, accountability, and quality improvement in study abroad.
The Next Frontier With accountability a buzzword in the air, it's only natural that study abroad programs might soon come under stricter scrutiny, compelled to pony up data and dossiers for policing of some sort. A largely unregulated industry that's experienced rapid growth in recent years, study abroad programs are ripe for quality control mechanisms, said Brian J. Whalen, president and chief executive officer of The Forum on Education Abroad, an organization representing about 250 institutions that is beginning a voluntary, standards- and mission-based self-study and external evaluation review process this coming year that looks something like accreditation. "We're in a field with a lot of committed, optimistic people who really believe in international education. We're also in a field with a cost of entry that has decreased markedly in the last 10 years," Michael Steinberg, executive vice president and director of academic programs for the Institute for the International Education of Students and chair of the Forum's standards committee, said Wednesday during a session at the annual NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference in Minneapolis. "If you've got some computer skills, you can put up a Web site, you can print out things cheaply, you can hire a 24-year-old to run a program, and contract with a university abroad set up to make money," said Steinberg -- adding that while some universities are very discerning about what programs they work with, others are decidedly less so. "Before others start to police us, we have to police ourselves," Steinberg said. "That is partially what this project is all about." The Forum on Education Abroad, a five-year-old group based at Dickinson College, in Pennsylvania, began its work by soliciting the advice of hundreds of international educators to establish standards of good practice and related queries meant to apply broadly to a variety of credit-bearing study abroad programs. The standards cover ethics, mission, academic framework, organizational and program resources, student selection and code of conduct, student learning, the learning environment, and health and safety. Examples of the queries, available online, include "Do opportunities exist for students to interact with persons of different backgrounds?" (under the student learning umbrella), "Does the organization clearly define expected outcomes?" (related to mission) and "Do program facilities, classrooms, offices, home stays, excursions and field trips meet home country safety standards as closely as possible?" (under the health and safety standard, of course). The Forum also offers a toolkit to member institutions describing best practices relative to these standards. After receiving recognition as a Standards Development Organization for the study abroad field by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission in 2005, the Forum moved forward with a pilot project in which institutions -- including Pennsylvania State University, the School for International Training and Syracuse University -- volunteered to engage in a comprehensive review of their implementation of the standards. Now, starting in fall 2007, Forum members will be eligible to apply to participate in the Quality Improvement Program Review, in which institutions engage in the voluntary self-study and peer review process -- guided, Whalen said, by an institution's mission, philosophies, goals and definitions of education abroad (and supportive of an institution's own quality assurance measures, unlike accreditation). It's not a compliance or accreditation process, Whalen stressed, though "it certainly assists very nicely in an accreditation self-study or strategic planning." In the long run, a stamp of approval by the Forum could "separate those that do adhere to essential standards and those that do not," Michael Woolf, president of the Foundation for International Education -- which participated in the pilot -- said at Wednesday's NAFSA session. "It is timely. It seems to me that in the history of study abroad, we've moved through a number of developmental stages," Woolf said: the pioneering stage, the cooperation stage and now the competition stage. In addition to encouraging good practices, Woolf praised the system as a process whereby study abroad institutions, particularly stand-alone entities not embedded within a university, can gain credibility and, therefore, some marketing value. But it's that push for a one-size-fits-all stamp of approval that Chris Deegan, director of the study abroad office at the University of Illinois at Chicago, had some reservations about. Although generally expressing support for the initiative and indicating that he believes it will ultimately benefit the field of international education, he added his hesitation that because the study abroad field is so unregulated right now, the process "could be used in a way that won't move us forward." There will come a day years from now, he said, when people will realize that all institutions with the Forum stamp of approval aren't created equal in terms of quality -- but in the meantime, because few people understand the nuance of the study abroad world, many could interpret a successful journey through the Forum review process in ways they shouldn't. So far, about 20 institutions have expressed interest in undergoing a review through the Quality Improvement Program, and about half of those have applied, Whalen said. The first group of peer reviewers went through training just this week, and a review panel, to consist of seven senior officials who will review the documentation, is set to be appointed within the next several weeks. -- Elizabeth Redden
The Forum welcomes your responses, comments, thoughts, and questions.Labels: QUIP, Standards
Forum President Responds to the Chronicle of Higher Education
The December 15 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education featured an article about the academic integrity of the University of Indianapolis's branch campus in Athens, Greece. In response, President Brian Whalen has submitted a letter to the editor.
To The Editor: Sara Hebel's "On an American Campus in Greece, a Chorus of Critics" points out the need for standards for educational programs offered by U.S. institutions abroad. In fact, the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission designated a Standards Development Organization (SDO) for education abroad in 2005: the Forum on Education Abroad. The Forum's Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad were developed with the input of hundreds of professionals working in the U.S. and around the world. They are available at www.forumea.org. Currently, the Forum is testing the implementation of these standards at 19 institutions, including U.S. colleges and universities, study abroad providers, and overseas host institutions in Australia, England, Ireland, and Mexico. At a Standards Summit held at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA ten days ago, representatives from these institutions as well as peer reviewers who conducted site visits met to refine the standards and the processes for implementing them. The results will be presented at the Forum's conference, March 1 - 3, 2007 at the University of Texas in Austin, where the Forum's Quality Improvement Program (QUIP) for Education Abroad will be advanced. QUIP is a multi-level, comprehensive process that will provide quality assurance in education abroad for the benefit of students, faculty, administrators, and parents. We invite colleagues interested in education abroad to join in this conversation in Austin. Brian J. Whalen
President and CEO
The Forum on Education Abroad
Carlisle, PA
Labels: Standards
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