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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

By Karin Fischer | The Chronicle Of Higher Education

April 27, 2014

WASHINGTON — Historically black colleges in the United States have

a legacy of international engagement. They educated generations of

political, business and scientific leaders, from Africa as well as from

countries such as India, whose graduates were not always welcome at

other American institutions.

Many historically black colleges and universities, or H.B.C.U.s,

developed close ties with foreign universities. Some, originally

agricultural colleges, played an important role in development work

overseas.

Today, however, black colleges often lag behind their predominantly

white peers in international efforts. They enroll few foreign students

and send even fewer overseas — a 2011 survey by the Association of

Public and Land-Grant Universities found that fewer than 1 percent of

students at its historically black member institutions studied abroad,

and just 2 percent of their student bodies came from another country.

Their international offices may be poorly staffed or even nonexistent,

and financial constraints can limit overseas travel. Some on campus

may even see becoming more international as a threat to the

institutions’ core mission of educating African-American students.

But with a growing consensus that graduates need global experience

and skills to succeed in an ever more interdependent world, there is

concern that historically black colleges and universities, which award

22 percent of the bachelor’s degrees earned by black students in the

United States, are being left behind. That prospect reflects a broader

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issue, of whether the internationalization of American higher

education tends to benefit only an elite group of students and

institutions.

“Are we really serious about global learning for all?” asks Patti McGill

Peterson, presidential adviser for global initiatives at the American

Council on Education. “It’s an equity question.”

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The council, with support from the United States Department of

Education, spent more than a year examining the challenges for

historically black institutions in internationalization, working with

seven colleges to assess their current efforts and to develop strategies

to globalize their curricula and campuses. A report on the findings will

be released later this spring.

Some of the headwinds black colleges face will be familiar to other

institutions: lack of money, for instance, or of institutional leadership.

But these obstacles are often felt more acutely at black colleges, says

Gailda Davis, one of the project’s leaders.

During the 18-month study, she notes, almost all the participating

institutions had major turnover among their top administrators. The

council’s previous work has identified support from presidents and

provosts as a critical factor in successful international efforts.

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At North Carolina A&T State University, budgetary problems have

sometimes threatened to undercut the progress the institution has

made. The university, which took part in the project, approved a

special fee to support scholarships for study abroad. But during the

recent recession it eliminated its foreign languages department to save

money. It now offers only entry-level language courses, says Minnie

Battle Mayes, director of its office of international programs. Students

who hope to learn a language well enough to study at a foreign

university must go off-campus for needed courses.

Ms. Mayes makes do with a staff of just three to handle all of the

university’s international work. “We have strong, viable partnerships

abroad,” she says, “but these all require someone to look after them.”

With limited administrative support, international work at black

colleges can happen ad hoc, without formal agreements. If a faculty

member who started an overseas research project or student exchange

retires or leaves the institution, that connection can be lost, Ms. Davis

says.

While many of these difficulties are common, to a degree, to other

institutions, some are specific to black colleges. For one, possible

partner universities abroad may not be familiar with the concept of a

historically black institution. And potential students, particularly in

Asia, the home region of most international students heading to the

United States, may be even less aware.

“When you go abroad, you have to spend a great deal of time

answering the question, ‘Who are you?”’ says Kimya Dawson-Smith,

an independent education consultant who was formerly director of the

office of international students and study-abroad programs at Dillard

University, a historically black liberal arts college in New Orleans. “It’s

a barrier not shared by other universities.”

Some programs seek to help institutions overcome these hurdles. The

H.B.C.U.-Brazil Alliance, started in 2008, brings Brazilian students to

study at black colleges in the United States.

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But students and faculty members at historically black colleges and

universities may be wary of admitting larger numbers of foreign

students or of a new emphasis on making the campus more

internationally focused, concerned that these efforts could detract

from their mission. Among the fears, Ms. Davis says: “What will this

mean for our culture, our history? Do we just become like every other

institution?”

“They worry,” she says, “about the loss of H.B.C.U.-ness if the campus

internationalizes.”

Persuading students to travel overseas can also be difficult, says

Maxine Sample, director of international education at Virginia State

University. Fewer than 4 percent of American students who go abroad

are black, according to the Institute of International Education, far

less than their share of the overall college population.

A large number of Ms. Sample’s students are the first in their families

to go to college, and they — and their parents — don’t always see how

international study fits with their degree or career. “For many of them,

going away to college is quite a journey,” she says. “To talk about

leaving the country might be a stretch.”

At the same time, black colleges may have some strengths that could

help them in their global work, Ms. Davis and her colleagues at the

council found. For instance, faculty members at these institutions

often play a strong mentoring role and influence students’ choice of

courses, majors, even careers. If professors are persuaded of the value

of study abroad, they could be valuable advocates.

In some cases, the interest may be there but untapped by colleges. At

Dillard, a third of faculty members were born abroad, Ms. Dawson-

Smith says.

Likewise, when Ms. Sample reviewed Virginia State’s courses as part

of the project, she found that fully half had some sort of global content.

“That’s a strength we can build on” in internationalizing the

curriculum, she says.

Black colleges may also have connections in parts of the world where

American universities have not typically had strong ties. Tuskegee

University in Alabama has worked in Africa for more than a century.

Back in 1901, Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee’s founder, sent four of

his students to Togo. Tuskegee became the model for Liberia’s Booker

Washington Institute, the start of a long relationship between the two.

Tuskegee, says Thierno Thiam, special assistant to the university’s

president for global initiatives, is drawing on its expertise in the

region in some of its current international efforts, such as a federally

sponsored project to improve water and environmental sciences at

three African universities.

Given its legacy abroad, Mr. Thiam says, “Tuskegee has absolutely no

option but to globally engage.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 28, 2014 in The International New York Times. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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