An Overview of the Education Abroad Field: Understanding What’s Out There

Before you choose your adventure, let’s start by understanding the international education field and the opportunities that are out there.

What is international education?

For the purposes of this article and the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Abroad Pathway, we can think about the world of international education broadly. International education may be a traditional semester or year abroad after which credit for the classes you took end up on the transcript from your home institution. It could be a four-week cultural tour with your favorite faculty member. It could also be a volunteer or internship experience through your university, the Fulbright English-Language Teaching Assistantship Program or the Peace Corps. It may also be something that you organize yourself with funding from personal savings or a Kristiensen Grant from Inter-Exchange.

Overall, an international education experience should consist of travel to another country in which you participate in some sort of a purposeful activity such as gaining academic credit, building skills on the job or contributing your time and energy to the host community. A summer soaking in the sun on a beach in Spain does not alas qualify.

In that sense, international education, and the international education field are two different things. The first one is what we described above, and the second one is the entire mix of organizations that contribute to providing the organized and coordinated or not so coordinated experiences that we are used to thinking of when study abroad comes to mind. Let’s take a look at the international education field, to learn about the types of entities that exist.

Colleges

Faculty Led Programs

Most of the time people think about studying abroad in college. Many colleges offer educational experiences abroad, and most of those are led by faculty. Faculty led education abroad programs may last anywhere from weeks to months.

A faculty member who wishes to lead a study abroad program may receive technical support from an office of international education, located on the campus. In some institutions, all international education programs would go through the office of international education. In others, individual departments within the college may implement their own programs without involvement from a central source.

Sometimes faculty led programs can be a great place for students with limited to no international experience to start their international adventures. Many students feel more comfortable traveling with the faculty who they may already know from their classes. Faculty led programs may also offer a more specialized curriculum such as disability rights in Japan or theater in Britain.

On the other hand, faculty led programs may have fewer resources for providing reasonable accommodations. Faculty themselves may have less knowledge about how to troubleshoot reasonable accommodation concerns in the international context, and they may be accustomed to thinking about accommodations strictly in academic terms, and relying on the office of disability resources to provide those.

Disability concerns aside, faculty themselves have many other demands on their time. Most faculty want to earn tenure, and the way that you do that is by publishing papers and not by leading study abroad programs. A study abroad program may be a passion project for a few years, before a faculty member finds that they would like to do something else either because they are board or because other priorities demand it.

International Education Consortia

Sometimes understood to be a consortium, other times referred to as third-party providers, these are organizations apart from your college that may provide education abroad opportunities. Since they may partner with a university or college, credit for third-party or consortium programs may transfer back to your home campus.

Sometimes a consortium may be organized by a collection of colleges that would like to pool their resources to offer a wider variety of opportunities for their students. The University Of California Education Abroad Program (UCEAP) is one such example. Students who are not affiliated with the University of California may not participate in EAP’s programs. In other cases, a consortium may be open and not be affiliated with any college such as international educational studies (IES). In other cases, though they may be affiliated with universities such as in the case of IFSA-Butler, students from other colleges still may participate in its programs and receive credit.

Government

Other types of international education programs may be offered through governments. The U.S. Department Of Defense sponsors the Boren Program. The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) offers an even larger collection of opportunities such as the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship Program and Fulbright academic exchanges. The Peace Corps has sponsored a 27-month volunteer experience for Americans to serve in developing countries around the world since the 1960s. The German Education Service (DAAD) sponsors a variety of exchange opportunities between Germany and other countries such as the Congress Bundestat program, for Americans who wish to spend a year going to a high school in Germany. Many governments offer their own opportunities for internationals to come and teach English. France and Spain are two such examples.

As government-sponsored programs, they usually do not come with a price tag for the participant. Entities like ECA will even contribute extra funding for reasonable accommodation costs. Since these programs come with financial support, they are heavily coveted by aspiring Globetrotters. The Fulbright Program is very prestigious, and its alumni are highly sought after in professional and academic circles. Opportunities like the Peace Corps, though less competitive, demand a great deal of participants in terms of time and sacrifice.

Non-Governmental

Similar in prestige and competitiveness to the government programs are those offered by nonprofits and foundations. Rotary International offers a mix of professional certificate programs, Masters degree programs and high school exchanges for individuals from around the world interested in areas of peace and development. Atlas International offers a professional certificate for professionals under the age of 35.

Self-Organized

Finally, there are the opportunities which you organize yourself. Have you ever wanted to volunteer at a school in Thailand? Maybe tutoring Chilean professionals in English is your pace, or taking a gap year to explore.

You may no longer be a student, or you may have become too old (it happens to the best of us!). You may have just run out of interesting options from the formalized international education field. Sometimes if you want something done right, you do it yourself.

Conclusion

So now you know that when we say “international education”, we don’t just mean study abroad in college. It’s a big wide world out there, both geographically and programmatically. Advanced to the following resources to explore it in more depth.