The Forum Focus - March 2015 by The Forum on Education Abroad

The

FORUM

Focus

March 2015 | Volume 1 | Issue 1

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Presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Corner BrianWhalen, President & CEO,The Forum on Education Abroad Responding to Calls for Regulation of Education Abroad

ver the past year The Forum has been actively engaged in advocating for its members and the field by discussing with both legislators in the State of Minnesota and in Congress proposals for legislation to regulate health and safety practices in education abroad. The Forum has reported on these legislative efforts and continues to be actively engaged to represent the best interests of Forum member institutions. It is critical for The Forum to participate pro-actively in the legislative processes at both the state and federal levels so that any legislation is informed by the expertise that education abroad professionals alone can offer. The push for legislation to regulate specific education abroad health and safety practices stems from grassroots efforts calling for more data and uniform quality assurance practices. In my meetings and communications with legislators I have come to appreciate how we share the same goal of helping to ensure that the student experience abroad is the very best that it can be.

However, I have also learned that proposals to regulate education abroad are often based on some mistaken assumptions. First, the prevailing view is that education abroad is a high risk educational activity; however, there is no data to support this claim. Second, there is a tendency to lump together secondary education experiences with university-level education abroad, while we know these are quite different enterprises. Third, there is a lack of knowledge about what institutions and program provider organizations do to support student health and safety abroad. â&#x2C6;&#x2122;2â&#x2C6;&#x2122;

Finally, there is a lack of understanding about how education abroad assures quality through knowledge about and training in standards, and in meeting accreditation requirements. Education abroad can best respond to calls for its regulation in three comple“..the prevailing view is that mentary ways. First, as a field we can do education abroad is a high a better job of placing front and center all that institutions, organizations and prorisk educational activity; grams do to try to ensure quality educahowever, there is no data to tion abroad that is as safe as possible. support this claim.” Students, their families, legislators, and the general public are not aware of the health and safety best practices that undergird our programs. They therefore cannot appreciate fully the health, safety and security work that is largely done behind the scenes, and which is essential to monitoring and helping to mitigate risk. We need to advocate actively on our own behalf by detailing the myriad ways that we work to develop and manage programs that are as safe as possible.

Second, we should respond to calls for regulation by finding reasonable ways to pro“…as a field we can do vide the information that is being asked for at a better job of placing both the national and individual program levels. The Forum is now working with insurance front and center all companies to provide a comprehensive report that institutions, regarding critical incidents that occur in eduorganizations and cation abroad. Based on claims data, this has programs do to try to the potential to be a highly representative ensure quality sample that can help to paint a truer picture of the range, types and number of incidents that education abroad that occur during education abroad. This report will is as safe as possible.” provide for the first time data upon which legislative deliberations can be based rather than assumptions about incidents involving students during education abroad. In addition, data from the Critical Incident Database will help us further to understand these incidents. ∙3∙

The Forum recently formed a Working Group to study and make recommendations about how education abroad entities should comply with reporting regulations dictated by Title IX and The Clery Act. But legislators are asking for more information than what is required by these laws, and we should be willing and able to find ways to be as transparent as possible about the health and safety of students on our programs while at the same time protecting their privacy as required by law. Third, institutions and organizations should have their practices regularly reviewed objectively as part of overall quality assurance efforts such as those that are a part of regional or national accreditation processes. The Forum’s Quality Improvement Program also provides this level of rigorous, objective review and can be used by itself to assure quality, or in conjunction with a broader institutional review. There is both common ground and differences between the education abroad field and those who advocate for greater regulation. In 2007 the education abroad field faced a comparable situation with investigations by the New York and Connecticut Attorneys General. Then, the call was for greater transparency about relationships between universities and colleges and independent program provider organizations, as well as greater transparency regarding pricing and how and why institutions limit students’ choices of programs. The field responded to that call by providing more detailed explanations about pricing, the costs of education abroad and quality assurance, and the ways in which ethical standards are maintained. We should respond to the current calls for the regulation of education abroad health and safety practices in similar ways. While no human activity, including education abroad, can ever be free of risk, we practice quality assurance when we strive to follow the field’s Standards, provide detailed information about our programs, and dedicate ourselves to continuous improvement. ∙4∙

The Value Question: Quality Assurance in Higher Education and Education Abroad Annmarie Whalen,Vice President for Programs & Resources,The Forum on Education Abroad

igher education globally is under increasing scrutiny regarding its escalating price and whether the price reflects its value. Students, their families, governments and corporations all have high expectations for what higher education should deliver: learning, the hope of employment, and marketable skills. In this environment, standardized quality assurance mechanisms validate the worthiness of higher education’s promises. Quality assurance in U.S. higher education is based on the regional accreditation system. In her recent publication, Mapping The Landscape: Ac-

creditation and the International Dimensions of US Higher Education,

“…standardized quality assurance mechanisms validate the worthiness of higher education’s promises.”

Madeleine Green outlines how education abroad intersects with U.S. accreditation programs in uneven ways. Some regional accreditation programs have detailed ways in which institutional education abroad programming is judged, while others make little mention of such programs. U.S.-based independent program providers do not fall under these accreditation programs. International institutions hosting U.S. students participate in their country’s quality assurance mechanisms. Independent program providers based in other countries may seek accreditation if such options are offered for their type of organization. When U.S. or internationally-based independent program providers work with Schools of Record, accredited U.S. institutions provide quality assurance by overseeing the academic program and faculty. The Forum’s Quality Improvement Program (QUIP) is based on the U.S. accreditation model and designed to provide quality assurance, to assist both institutions to meet their regional or national accreditation ∙5∙

“…the QUIP process has been streamlined and redesigned to make it more userfriendly while still maintaining its rigor.”

requirements and organizations working outside accepted accreditation structures. In education abroad, it has been a common practice that organizations and institutions conduct periodic reviews of their programs using private consultants or members of an advisory committee. While this is a useful tool to improve programs, such reviews do not provide the same measure of quality assurance as QUIP reviews.

Like accreditation reviews, QUIP is objective, requires a rigorous selfstudy and site visits, is based on authoritative Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad, and utilizes trained peer reviewers who make judgments about whether the institution’s or organization’s programs are in conformity with the Standards. At the end of the process, a panel of experts reviews the self-study and peer review report and makes a final determination about whether or not the organization is in overall substantial conformity with the Standards. A determination of “yes” carries the most significant judgment available regarding the quality of education abroad programming. The Forum closely monitors developments in accreditation and international quality assurance through its membership in the Council on Higher Education Accreditation International Quality Group. A significant part of recent debate in international quality assurance has focused on noninstitutional providers of credit. While a relatively recent development in higher education, independent program providers have long been valued partners in education abroad, where, as non-institutional providers of credit, they sponsor and manage a significant percentage of education abroad programming. ∙6∙

The Forum recently subjected QUIP to an external review to assess and improve the program. As a result, the QUIP process has been streamlined and redesigned to make it more user-friendly while still maintaining its rigor. It also includes a number of enhancements to the recognition that institutions receive when they complete the program successfully. In addition, the new and improved QUIP is based on the 5th edition of the Standards of Good Practice. While QUIP will remain a voluntary quality assurance program, and, unlike accreditation, does not involve any sanctions if organizations are found not to be in conformity with the Standards, it nonetheless is the primary way that the education abroad field can validate the quality and value of its programming. In an era of heightened expectations for and scrutiny of higher education, this is an opportunity that all organizations and institutions that sponsor or manage education abroad programs should consider.

New Law Requires Incident Reporting by Minnesota Colleges & Universities Jodi Malmgren, Director of International and Off-Campus Studies, St. Olaf College

n May 2014, Governor Dayton of Minnesota signed the first law in the country to require incident data collection for education abroad programs. Section 5 of the law requires all institutions eligible for state financial aid to report deaths and hospitalizations that occur during and as a result of participation in an institution’s approved study abroad programs. Since last May, the Minnesota State Office of Higher Education (OHE) has begun work on implementation of the law. OHE created a reporting website and communicated with academic leaders and education abroad offices about the first reporting deadline of November 1, 2015. A coalition of education abroad and legislative affairs experts across the State of Minnesota – representing the University of Minnesota, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MNSCU), Minnesota private colleges, and education abroad providers—has advocated for the interests of institutions and education abroad participants. Coalition members, together with ∙7∙

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“In May 2014, Governor Dayton of Minnesota signed the first law in the country to require incident data collection for education abroad programs.”

The Forum on Education Abroad President Brian Whalen, met with legislative representatives and helped shape the text of the law. Two members testified at the Senate committee hearing. Since the law took effect, coalition efforts have focused on defining key terms of the law, clarifying reporting requirements, and communicating with Minnesota institutions in advance of the annual report due date, in partnership with OHE.

Minnesota institutions are now collecting the first round of incident data for their student participants between August 1, 2014 and July 31, 2015. Campuses with established incident reporting procedures needed only to communicate about the new law, streamline processes, and determine who will submit the report. Other campuses, especially those without a centralized education abroad office or staff, are developing incident data collection, response, and/or reporting procedures, as incidents may be variously reported to deans of students, education abroad advisers, faculty, or other responsible campus officials. All deaths and hospitalizations will be reported to OHE by institution and country, with total participant numbers added to enable calculation of incident rates. Institutions will not provide private student data, such as names of participants. OHE will aggregate and publish the data in compliance with applicable state privacy regulations, which allow reporting of hospitalizations only where the relevant dataset (i.e., institution and country where an incident occurs) includes at least ten students. Section 14 of the law required OHE to provide recommendations for appropriate state regulation of postsecondary education abroad programs. The February 2015 OHE report resulted in revised legislation being proposed in the Minnesota House and Senate, where it awaits the first hearing ∙8∙

in March. The Senate bill’s sponsor, Senator Terri Bonoff, has requested two significant changes to the existing legislation: (i) to report all incidents by education abroad program name, host and type and (ii) to mandate that Minnesota institutions request disclosure of incidents that occurred abroad by surveying students upon completion of their program. The coalition continues to advocate for the best interests of students and institutions with the Office of Higher Education and our legislative representatives. 

Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The Forum on Education Abroad. The Forum encourages responses to the perspectives in this issue. Reflections, topic suggestions and other correspondence are welcomed, and all contributions will be considered for future publication. Please send correspondence to: info@forumea.org

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