This qualitative investigation explains the ways in which community college decision makers justify the inclusion of international students at three community colleges in the United States. We identify and explain the ways in which decision makers rationalize institutional policy—particularly recruitment strategies and motivations—related to international students, and discuss whether these policies could be considered ethical in a globalized context. Importantly, we conclude that community college decision makers first crafted a class of privileged international students and then justified price discrimination on the basis of said privilege. This vicious circle, we call the international access paradox, prevented decision makers from recognizing or responding to the needs of low socioeconomic status (SES) international students and international students from disadvantaged countries.
International students and scholars in the United States (U.S.) have often been excluded from conversations about race, ethnicity, and migration within U.S. contexts. However, with the issuance of what is commonly known as the Travel Bans, fears emerged from the international education community of the Travel Bans affecting international student recruitment and enrollment. In this study, we highlight the ways in which an official statement from leaders of international higher education organizations employ interest convergence arguments, followed by a discussion of the ways in which convergence in this case is employed as a tool to garner U.S. soft power. The examination of a brief of amicus curiae submitted by the American Council on Education and 32 additional higher education associations revealed the commodification of international students and scholars when using interest convergence as an analytical frame for examining the soft power (Nye, 2008). International students and scholars contribute to U.S. soft power as a means of garnering diversity, contributing to foreign policy, producing knowledge, and generating economic gains.
Objective: In an effort to break away from the stale classifications of community college students that stem from the hegemonic perspective of previous literature, this work utilizes the perceptions of community college practitioners to demonstrate new ways of understanding the identities of community college students. Method: By utilizing Gee’s identity theory and Grillo’s theory of intersectionality, we analyze interviews with community college practitioners from three different community colleges on the West coast of the United States to answer these questions: What identities (i.e., natural, institutional, and discursive) do faculty and administrators recognize in community college students? In what ways do community college faculty and administrators describe and conceptualize community college students? Findings: First, community college student identities are intricate and have changed with time; there are two different institutional views held by organizational members—the educational view and the managerial view—which both shape the construction of student identities and play a prominent role in determining which students are disadvantaged. Second, organizational members constructed meanings of student achievement and value (i.e., attributes or outcomes of the ideal student, or what policy makers and institutions refer to as success) according to organizational priorities and perspectives. Conclusion: This investigation encapsulates and elucidates the portrayals and understandings of community college students held by community college administrators and faculty as a means to acknowledge the diverse identities among these students. Scholars and practitioners are encouraged to acknowledge the polymorphic identities of this diverse population to improve scholarship and practice.
Aim/Purpose: This investigation examines 15 interviews at one critical case in Finland to explore the ways in which practitioners of higher education address the challenges associated with the pursuit of a global social good agenda. Employing the language of the participants, the purpose of this investigation is to explain the ways in which tertiary education practitioners conceptualize their “global responsibility” and how this concept aligns with the pursuit of a global social good agenda. Background: In many nations, at the domestic level, the pursuit of social good is considered a fundamental component of the university mission, but the same logic is not always applied internationally. Finland employs the concept of global responsibility to, presumably, address this mission. When social good is considered internationally, there is little direction on what this means or how to promote this goal. The ways in which practitioners actually define and navigate global social good at institutions of higher education is not researched. Methodology: This investigation is part of a larger research project funded by Fulbright Finland and the Lois Roth Endowment. Throughout the entirety of the investigation, I engaged in ten months of participant observation and collected interviews from actors within multiple Finnish institutions of higher education. Explorational interviews of other institutions of higher education allowed me to confirm that I had indeed selected a critical case. This investigation draws on 15 strategically selected interviews with higher education practitioners at the selected institution. Contribution: Unlike previous scholarship, this empirical work documents an example of an institution in which practitioners conceptualize internationalized higher education outside of the neoliberal hegemony. Although neoliberalism is certainly present, there is strong evidence of a critical/liberal foundation that enables resistance. Findings: This investigation defines and operationalizes global responsibility and explains the duplicitous definitions of global responsibility—the critical/liberal and the neoliberal. In doing so, the investigation provides an example of an institution attempting to purposefully enact globally social good initiatives, and highlights the ways in which neoliberalism impedes a global social good agenda. Recommendations for Practitioners: This research provides an empirical foundation for a non-neoliberal approach to internationalization from which to build higher education policy. Practitioners should consider pursuing the critical/liberal goals of global responsibility from within their own cultural context. Specific elements of importance elucidated by practitioner interviews in the Finnish context include need-based aid for international student tuition, international partnerships with non-affluent institutions, and open access publication. The ways in which neoliberal funding mechanisms distinctivize these global social good initiatives should also be considered. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers should consider their own methodologically nationalist assumptions. Social good research that begins from the confies of the nation state selectively excludes most of the world’s most disadvantaged student populations. Within the national container, researchers limit their conception of global responsibility to the neoliberal. Impact on Society: This critical case demonstrates a disconcerting neoliberal creep that will likely lead to increasingly unjust internationalization. University internationalization efforts can and do contribute to global social inequality when policies are left unquestioned (Stein, 2016). Neoliberal global responsibility manifests many of the ethical perils of internationalization identified by neoliberal and critical internationalization scholars, such as assumptions of an equal playing field, win-win situations, nationalism, selective recognition of difference, and knowledge as universal (Harvey, 2007; Stein, 2016). The most salient examples documented here are the decision to charge international student tuition while offering only merit-based aid, as well as the decision to strategically partner with more economically advantaged institutions of higher education. In alignment with the theory of coloniality (Quijano, 2007), these decisions serve to reproduce global structural inequity by continuing to privilege those who have been historically privileged. Naming the action—neoliberal global responsibility—provides a platform from which to discuss, research, and resist this mechanism of global social injustice (Boris, 2005). Future Research: Future research should employ this operationalized frame of global responsibility (adapted for their own cultural context) to assess contributions and impedements to global social good at new institutions of higher education.
Scholars have identified community colleges as ideal institutions to facilitate global justice through their involvement in internationalization activities such as study abroad. This chapter explores the meaning of humanism as it relates to study abroad at the community college. Using Andreotti, Stein, Pashby, and Nicolson's Paradigms of Discourse, the chapter describes the ways in which humanism can be defined in a variety of ways based on one's own goals. The chapter also grounds a rationale for study abroad at the community college within critical humanism by applying Young's Social Connections Model. Finally, the chapter applies the critical humanist rationale to begin to question the relationship between community college study abroad initiatives: Who is included in the community mission? Whose cultures come to be understood from involvement in study abroad? How are U. S. cultures represented by study abroad?
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