When we are discussing issues of internationalization in class we usually stop at the institutional level. Otherwise, we may discuss people in terms of student population movements between countries. This week, I tried to find something recently published that looked deeper than that. In the most recent Journal of International Students, researchers from Azusa Pacific University evaluated the way college experiences for international students diverge from their that of their domestic peers. They explain that their research fills an important hole in the literature which often ignores student satisfaction outcomes for international students. Using data from the 2010 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES), they came to some interesting conclusions.

The article shows that international students report lower levels of satisfaction with their college experience, with a particular weight placed on the quality of the classroom experience. Moreover, the researchers found that low levels of satisfaction correlated with lower levels of cognitive improvement. The researchers conclude that their findings should influence universities to craft more effective support systems for international students and ensure that international students’ satisfaction level equals that of their domestic peers. They suggest that knowingly selling an inferior product to an unwitting buyer is tantamount to exploitation on the part of the university.

Overall, I think the article makes a good moral argument about the risks of the profit model which is driving internationalization. That said, I don’t think the strength of their research design can quite back up the strength of their claim. For instance, the UCUES, from which the data for the study was pulled is a one-time survey of outgoing college seniors which relies extensively on retrospective self-reporting.  The study also suffers from a lack of longitudinal data. To be fair, the researchers do acknowledge these limitations in the concluding paragraphs.

Still, I think the article raises an important question about parity between students at research universities that may be uniquely relevant to SIPA given the size of its international student community.