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With the advent of the global economy and marketplace, cultural sensitivity and language proficiency have assumed new, higher levels of importance in business education. Consequently, business schools need to acclimate both faculty and students to the global environment. Study abroad is an effective way to accomplish internationalization of faculty and students; however, there are many challenges relating to study abroad that need to be resolved. The underlying rationale for study abroad is evolving, as are the anticipated outcomes for students studying abroad. Moreover, there is no single source of information about study abroad and best practices relating to study abroad. Formal assessment of study abroad programs is rarely undertaken in the belief that the value of study abroad is self-evident; therefore, assessment is not critical. Consequently, study abroad is a topic on which much more research is needed. There are great opportunities for scholars and practitioners in the field of study abroad to do research in the different aspects of study abroad and disseminate and publish the results. The educational opportunities are virtually unlimited, as the importance of study abroad as a response to training business and other students to be able to function effectively in the global economy increases.

Certain administrative structures and processes need to be in place on the home campus to provide high quality study abroad experiences for students. They provide the support needed to make study abroad programs successful and effective. To this end, they need to be based on criteria that ensure the best possible quality in these arrangements as they relate to stated program outcomes.

The object of this brief paper is to discuss the balance between business content and language proficiency in study abroad programs related to business. When blending these three activities, the challenge is to balance each appropriately. If the study abroad experience contains little or no business content, students lose out on the opportunity to learn elements of international business. If the study abroad experience contains little or no language content, students miss out on the cultural integration that is essential for international interactions. And if “study abroad” becomes too loose (i.e. party on the beach) or too rigid (i.e. no different than taking classes back home), students miss the essence of studying in a foreign location. Of course, there are excellent business study abroad programs that are conducted in English (e.g. see Keillor & Emore for the roundtable discussion regarding English language programs). The focus of this paper is the role of foreign language instruction and student proficiency in foreign language, as it relates to business study abroad programs.

During the past decade there has been a growing consensus that study abroad experiences are valuable not only for students majoring in the language of the country in which they intend to study, but that they also provide vital experiences for students enrolled in business programs. This is a change from the early 1980s when it was rare to find a business program offering study abroad experiences for its students. The increasingly global nature of commerce and the need for business professionals to effectively interact with people in a work force growing more diverse are strong arguments for students to study abroad. In addition to exposing students to different cultures and peoples, the study abroad experience challenges students to function in unknown environments and situations, teaches students about themselves, and forces them to look critically at their own resources and values. It is the ultimate “Problem-Based Learning” experience (PBL).

Recruiting students to study abroad is a difficult challenge for American colleges and universities. Study abroad advisors and directors of international programs are searching for better ways of marketing the overseas academic experience. Approximately 3% of U.S. students who pursue a bachelor’s degree study abroad at some point in their college career. In any given year, less than 1% (0.8%) of U.S. students take part in study abroad (Hayward, 2000, p. 9). American higher education falls far short of the Presidential Commission’s target of 10% by 2000 set in 1979 (Strength Through Wisdom, 1979). The typical college student who participates in study abroad is an undergraduate liberal arts major who spends one semester in a country in Western Europe. In 1999–2000, 63% of American students studying abroad were in Europe (Snapshot of Report on Study Abroad Programs, 2000, p. 1). Almost one fourth go to one country – Great Britain. Fifteen percent of study abroad students travel to Latin America, 6% to Asia and 3% to Africa (Hayward, 2000, p. 10). The small number of U.S. students (129,770) who experienced foreign study in 1998–1999 compares unfavorably with the much larger number of foreign students (490,933) who enrolled in U.S. institutions (Hesel & Green, 2000, p. 5). Even more disheartening is the fact that nearly 50% of students entering 4-year colleges say that they want to study abroad and that three out of four adults agree that students should study abroad (Hesel & Green, 2000, p. 1). When asked to choose which activity in college is most important to them, entering freshmen rank study abroad second only to internships (Hesel & Green, 2000, p. 3). There are obviously a number of barriers to student participation in foreign study.

From a traditional institutional perspective, the ultimate customer of the university is the student and perhaps his/her parents. From the perspective of a business school, however, the ultimate customer is the employer. Thus, a school’s goal, in particular a CIBER school, should be to develop and provide international programs that deliver expertise and experience to meet the needs of firms, not students. The students are the products, and the study abroad program is the means by which this product is developed and improved. Faculty are key players in the development and quality control of the student product.

Over the past fifteen years, U.S. study abroad enrollments have increased by 160%, with nearly 130,000 students earning credit abroad during the 1998–1999 academic year. The growth has been especially striking during the past five reporting years, as the number of participants has swelled by an astonishing 70% (Davis, 2000, p. 16). During the past fifteen years or so, our discussions about study abroad have come more and more to be dominated by this sort of self-congratulatory number-crunching: we’ve come to regard each successive annual increase in participation as a worthy achievement in itself, and much of what we do, and much about what we report to each other, focuses on our challenges and successes in pursuing this goal at our individual institutions, and on the national level. Thus, we identify the obstacles that stand in the way of greater student participation; we report about our institutional successes in administratively overcoming those obstacles; we commit ourselves to increasing the participation of African-American, Hispanic, disabled, natural science, business, math, engineering, and other “non-traditional” students; and we relish the gains we make in encouraging more of our students to study in “non-traditional” destinations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere.

This critical analysis explores issues linked to the development of sustainable study abroad programs in emerging nations, and the challenge of developing true partnerships between universities in the North and South. To this end the analysis: (1) develops a framework for analyzing the opportunities, challenges, and dilemmas of expanding study abroad programs in emerging nations; (2) asks how study abroad programs might be redesigned to become more beneficial to host institutions and communities, while providing more responsive and transformative learning experiences for students; and (3) examines the challenges facing universities from the North and South who wish to create collaborative partnerships linked to grants, research, and publications.

Cross-border student mobility represents a critical educational transition, especially for those students who choose to pursue a degree abroad as opposed to a short-term stay, and implies a complex adaptation process with regard to academic, sociocultural, and psychological factors. As a consequence of growing demand for international education and availability of resources and policies that encourage cross-border mobility, the number of international students worldwide is increasing continuously. Yet, little is known about the factors that motivate students to study abroad, and especially why some students choose to go whereas others to stay, given similar opportunities to study abroad. Accordingly, the purpose of the present chapter is to synthesize existing research on the decision-making process to study abroad, to outline important distinctions in types of student mobility and associated motivational implications, and to outline ways in which motivation theory can contribute to a better understanding of this process. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how motivation theories can help to address some of the open questions identified in prior research and thus contribute to a better understanding of the decision-making process to study in a foreign country.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the study abroad impact assessment project that has been undertaken during the past year by Michigan State University and to present some preliminary (and tentative) conclusions. It should be emphasized that this is a progress report, vulnerable to the uncertainties that time will remove as the project matures.