Study Abroad Programs Are Overwhelmingly White

If you’re searching for a way to change the world, it’d probably be helpful to go out and see the world first.

That’s the message that needs to be sent—and received, quite frankly—to diverse groups of students on college campuses throughout the United States, in light of a new study that found white students are more inclined to study abroad than students from minority groups.

I also think one of the study’s conclusions about why this is the case needs to be debunked.

 “Minority students don’t need to seek out cross-cultural experiences by traveling to another country because in most cases they already regularly interact across cultural differences in their everyday lives,” says the study, titled “Running Head: Minority Student Intent to Study Abroad.”

To me, even if this is remotely true in terms of being a descriptive indicator of the inertia that holds some minority students back from the world of study abroad, it seems like a dangerous idea to accept.

For one, while it may be true that students from minority groups already interact in different cultural worlds, doing so here in the United States is one thing. But seeing how things are in other parts of the world is something entirely different.

I think I can speak with a little authority on the matter since I’m actually one of the few black students at my alma mater who studied abroad back when I was in J-School in the mid-1990s.

I spent the summer of 1995—the last summer before my senior year in college at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee—studying abroad in Morocco.

My motive for visiting Morocco was, that as a Muslim, I wanted to see what it was like to reside in an Islamic country. Doing so left an indelible imprint on my life.

Not to bore you with the details of the journey, but in addition to hearing the melodic Islamic call to prayer five times a day and reading the Qur’an each evening in several of the country’s myriad mosques, I got the chance to gaze at stars while atop an old oceanside fort, ride a camel into the sunset at the edge of the Sahara desert, and bargain for handmade rugs while sipping tea within the walled-off and winding streets of Old Fez.

I don’t mention my motivation for going abroad—nor the subsequent experiences I had—simply to recount these things or amplify my still-unwritten autobiography.

Rather, as the study suggests, motivation, or lack thereof, lies at the heart of why there is such a paucity of minority students in study abroad programs. That is to say, the study found that minority students, for a variety of complex reasons that involve social and cultural capital, are simply not as inclined to go see the world as white students, at least not through study abroad programs.

In terms of actual numbers, the study states, while 81.8 percent of all study abroad participants in 2007-08 were white, only 64.4 percent of all students enrolled in post-secondary education in 2007-08 were white.

So what’s up with that?

The authors, University of Iowa professors Mark H. Salisbury, Michael B. Paulsen and Ernest T. Pascarella, advance some intriguing explanations, such as family obligations and fear of racism abroad. None of these theories, in my estimation, can adequately explain why, in this so-called “new global economy,” institutions that serve increasingly diverse student bodies haven’t figured out a way to stimulate and facilitate minority student interest in visiting other regions of the world.

What’s more, the study doesn’t deal with one of the most important factors in students’ decisions to study abroad or not: the destination.

Of all the study abroad destinations, more than half are in Europe, according to data on the web site of the Institute of International Education. And it’s hard to imagine that the fact that so many study abroad experiences involve going to Europe not having anything to do with the fact that minority students are less inclined than white students to study abroad.

Countries in Africa, on the other hand, were destinations just 4.5 percent of the time. And the Middle East, undoubtedly because of (perhaps overblown) safety concerns, represented 1.3 percent of the study abroad destinations. Latin America and Asia represented 15.3 and 11.1 percent of the destinations, respectively.

It seems to me that one way to increase minority participation in study abroad programs is to broaden the countries and continents visited. Back when I was in college, for instance, I was turned off by every single study abroad destination except Morocco. I had no interest in going to Spain or Latin America.

But because of my background, I would have gone to the Middle East or Africa in a heartbeat. (Interestingly, Morocco is in Africa, but it’s considered the westernmost part of the Middle East. I recall learning a little bit of the history of how that came to be while studying a Moroccan history class at Mohammed V University in Rabat.)

However, as I once stated during a lecture I gave at the University of Wisconsin System’s Institute for Global Studies 2004 conference, Engaging the Global Community: Best Practices in International Education, my fondest memories of studying abroad in Morocco are not of the times I spent in the classroom.

My fondest memories of Morocco are of the times I spent walking the streets, interacting with everyday people, going to shop at the souks, visiting the mosques and even pursuing a romantic interest or two.

Did I end up using my experience in Morocco to make myself some extra money in this so-called “new global economy” or change the world? No. At least not yet, anyway. But do I think I’m better off in terms of cultural enrichment and that my depth of understanding humanity has been expanded?

Most definitely.

Everyone’s motivation for seeing a different part of the world is going to be different. The challenge for universities and students who want to use their time in college to see the world, I think, is to find ways to tap into those motivations in a way that involves broader cross-sections of the student populace in study abroad. And it seems to me one of the best places to start is by simply asking students: Where would you like to go?

Jamaal Abdul-Alim is a staff writer for Campus Progress.

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