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Study Abroad

  • By Shannon O'Connor
  • 03/01/19

Included in this issue of College Planning & Management are two articles that feature information on universities outside of the U.S.: Tecnológico de Monterrey (Tec) in Monterrey, Mexico, and the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Tec serves as an example of how design and state-of-the-art technology innovations are taking institutions into the digital age with a thoughtful rebuild of an earthquake-damaged campus. At the University of Windsor, the administration has invested in a campus master plan that offers a vision of its open space and landscape aiming to enrich the student and community experience, update the feel of the campus, and make the university more competitive.

Should we be interested in initiatives on foreign campuses? I think we should.

More than 330,000 American college students studied abroad in the 2016-2017 academic year, according to the 2018 Open Doors Report published by the Institute of International Education. That’s a slight increase from the 2015-2016 academic year, when the number was just over 325,000. (These are students physically attending institutions abroad, not those utilizing virtual or online delivery of instruction.) International collaboration and competition between colleges and universities continues to grow, despite political rumblings that lean in favor of isolationism and building walls. U.S. institutions run more than 70 foreign branch campuses across the globe, according to the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT), hosted at the State University of New York at Albany and Pennsylvania State University. More than two dozen of them are in China, a growing market for western education.

Whether colleges or universities outside of the U.S. are branch campuses of American institutions—such as the Savannah College of Art and Design Hong Kong, or the University of New Orleans College of Business Administration in Jamaica, to name just two—or foreign-administered, they are still concerned with regulations, accountability, quality assurance, facilities design and maintenance, sustainability, safety, institutional legitimacy, technology, recruiting and retaining students and staff… All familiar topics for CP&M readers.

The locations may be world-wide, but the focus is the same. Creating functional, attractive, safe, and productive environments for all students.

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management March 2019 issue of Spaces4Learning.

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