As the head of international programmes at the Universidad de Monterrey, Thomas Buntru credits the university’s high exchange rate to his methods to measure success in study abroad experiences. He shares with the PIE how he implemented the strategy along with what challenges Mexican universities face to internationalise.
The PIE: UDEM leads Mexican universities in sending students abroad, how did your career start?
TB: I started as co-ordinator of exchange programmes in 1997 and the objective at that time was to open up opportunities of exchange and study abroad for our students. That developed into a two-way scheme because we were interested in signing bi-lateral agreements to not only be in the sending business but also in the receiving business. Over 90% of the institution’s income is tuition driven so reciprocal exchanges implied the two flows of outgoing and incoming fees.
The PIE: Partnerships between universities seems to be a popular mechanism of internationalisation in Mexico in general.
“We need to retain as much talent as possible, we don’t want to send our students abroad so they become engineers or scientists in countries that have plenty already”
TB: I respect the countries that are very successful in attracting students like the US and Australia and UK but I’m more inclined at looking at horizontal schemes of cooperation, maybe because I’m based in a threshold country. We need to retain as much talent as possible, we don’t want to send our students abroad so they become engineers or scientists in countries that have plenty already. We want to send them there for their education and training but we also want them to come back to contribute to the development of our own country.
The PIE: What percentage of the UDEM student body participates in an exchange?
TB: Right now more than half, 53% to be exact, of the class of 2012 had a documented international experience at some point in time during their studies.
The PIE: That’s quite impressive, surely part of that success comes down to the trailblazing methods you’ve set up to measure the impact of a study abroad experience. How did that begin?
TB: As early as 2006 we saw tendencies to measure student learning outcomes in study abroad so we started using an instrument that measures intercultural sensitivity– the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). We started applying it in 2006 and until 2009 we had very consistent results which were not what we expected.
The PIE: What did you expect?
TB: I naively expected that whoever goes on study abroad comes back as a changed person, the experience having had a huge impact in his or her life. And at least as measured by the IDI over that four year period, it was very consistent that there was no measurable impact.
The PIE: How does the IDI measure the development of cultural sensitivity?
TB: It’s on a scale of five stages where a person moves from an ethnocentric mindset to a more ethno relative or intercultural mindset. During the initial four years, wherever the students were on the range of one to five, maybe two or three, it didn’t matter– they just came back from an exchange the same. Sometimes they even regressed on the scale due to maybe reverse culture shock.
The PIE: Now you do see a significant change in IDI scores. What changed?
I naively expected that whoever goes on study abroad comes back as a changed person
TB: After attending many conferences, speaking with experts, checking other universities’ experience we decided that the study abroad experience as such is not enough. You need a pedagogical intervention, you need to prepare the students for this. This was a starting point and we developed a programme which consists of three courses. One is a semester long that students take before going on study abroad, the second is an online based course that they take while they are abroad, and the third one is a face to face seminar once they are back.
We had always done the typical pre-departure orientation- two to three days looking at logistical aspects, academic information, visa procedures, what to pack. Now we have a semester long course where students look at the theoretical models of intercultural sensitivity, communication, adaptation. The results have been astonishing. Students who have taken this first course even before going on study abroad have had a significant change in their IDI scores.
The PIE: So just after taking the preliminary course students have already changed their thinking?
TB: Yes and that motivated us to open the course up to the student population in general by including it in UDEM’s co-curriculum. Maximising study abroad benefits has become one of our major efforts of what is called “internationalisation at home”. Although we have a high student participation rate, that still means that about half of our students are left out so this is also a way to engage them in intercultural competencies while they stay on campus.
The PIE: Tell me about the online activities students do while they’re studying internationally.
TB: They keep a diary, they blog and also they connect with other students abroad. So a student from UDEM in the UK might have a conversation with one in Japan. They compare their experiences in the first week and so on. We have students all over the world with options in 60 countries which makes for a lot of interesting exchange among them.
The PIE: Would you say that as a private institution UDEM has an advantage because your students are more affluent than most who can access higher education in Mexico?
We have observed that the greatest barrier to study abroad in our population is the financial barrier
TB: That’s a valid observation. We have about 12,000 students, which is smaller than most Mexican public institutions. We don’t have the political pressures, our student population is mainly upper middle class and upwards. But don’t think that all of our students swim in money. We have observed that the greatest barrier to study abroad in our population is the financial barrier. Many of the families that send their kids to universities like UDEM or other private universities here in Mexico make extreme efforts to make this education available to their children. And very often for them, the study abroad participation is an extra strain on their budget that they’re not able to absorb anymore. We have responded to it as part of our strategic plan of internationalisation by budgeting for financial aid for students to go and study abroad from the university itself.
The PIE: Apart from low income students, what other challenges do Mexican institutions face to internationalise?
TB: There is a lack of government support. There is no national policy on internationalisation or international education as such. Different associations are lobbying for it like AMPEI– the Mexican association for international education and ANUIES– the Mexican rectors conference. But in Mexico the political agenda changes every six years with every change of president. New people come in and they have their own agenda and you have to start from scratch.
The PIE: Are lobbying efforts making a difference?
TB: I think they’re listening more and more. Currently I’m optimistic because of things that have been happening like the state visit of president Obama who made a declaration on his 100,000 strong initiative which is for all Latin America. Out of that also resulted a new effort of a bilateral effort to increase student mobility rates in both directions between Mexico and the United States. I think there is a new awareness in the federal government, especially in the federal ministry of education of this issue.
The PIE: Tell me about the student mobility survey you started with the Institute of International Education, Patlani.
Many institutions of higher education have a solid reputation and I think Mexico is in a good position to attract international students
TB: Patlani is an effort to document student mobility figures both outgoing and incoming because if you talk about developing national policies you need reliable data that you can work with. We have over 3,000 institutions of higher education in Mexico, out of those only 124 reported that they have student mobility. It’s not accurate and that’s a problem. But even though it doesn’t give the complete picture I think it’s a valid effort because it points out trends.
The PIE: What trends have emerged from the data?
TB: At the moment they aren’t very encouraging because the national mobility rate stands at about 1% of the enrolled student population for outgoing students and a little bit lower for incoming students. We have roughly 3,700,000 students studying in higher education in Mexico and out of them a little over 10,000 were international students in 2011-2012. Almost 18,000 Mexican students were on study abroad. That’s a pretty low rate.
The PIE: What do you think needs to change to improve those figures?
TB: We should be more confident in ourselves. Many institutions of higher education have a solid reputation and I think Mexico is in a good position to attract international students especially from other Spanish speaking countries in the American hemisphere– we include the US in that because they have a sizeable hispanic population. Traditionally we have always looked toward sending out our own instead of bringing others in. With more active and aggressive promotion Mexico could establish itself as a serious player in the international education industry.
