The Quality of Foreign Graduate Education in the US

A handful 171 of the 4,861 US accredited colleges and universities enroll 57 percent of all foreign graduate and undergraduate students (Open Doors 2009). Do the remaining 4,690 institutions have the required academic, research and social capital to cater to the needs of foreign students, particularly at the graduate level? The purpose of this case study is to explore the quality of the education obtained by foreign graduate students at institutions with low foreign enrollments. Program administrators, faculty, current and past foreign graduate students at a southwestern university participated in this study through focus group discussions, interviews and surveys. It was recommended that, for foreign graduate education to be effective, host institutions must 1) elevate the quality of graduate education, research and scholarship on campus and in the community, 2) comprehensively establish goals and objectives for internationalizing and globalizing curricula and programs, 3) strengthen ties with foreign graduate alumni, and establish and increase partnerships with overseas schools and sending countries, 4) improve academic and social supports for foreign graduate students, and 5) create incentives for faculty research in international and global studies.