Chair Joseph asks how CUNY recruits more students to study abroad
Chair Joseph cites research that study abroad students are more likely to graduate on time and with higher GPAs, asking how important active recruitment is. Stephen Ferst says students are not running to the door and describes a national drop-off from 80% interest in high school to 6-7% participation in college.
A research study showed that study abroad students were 6% more likely to graduate in four years.
Very good.
And four percentage point more likely to graduate in six years than their peers who did not study abroad.
And further, that study abroad students graduated with a higher GPA.
If these findings are generally true for U.S.
College students, how important is it to
CUNY to make an active effort to recruit more students to study abroad.
Are these findings true for CUNY or you don't have an issue?
Everybody's running to your door to go study abroad.
They are not running to our door.
How do we get them there?
We recruit very, very broadly to get the largest number of students to study abroad.
We know this is a high-impact practice.
We know that studying abroad is good for these students.
Ms.
Allen has a bit more of the statistics on how many of our students do study abroad and some of those other impacts and where we follow national trends.
I can tell you anecdotally, we do follow those national trends.
Nationally, when you ask a high school student if they'd like to study abroad in college, you will get about 80% of the students raising their hand.
When you ask if they expect to, you will get about 50% of the students raising their hand.
When you ask them when they graduate college, if they did, you will get 6% to 7% of the students.
The drop-off is tremendous.
And it is on us.
It is on all of us educators to build this into the curricula, to build room for this, to put this into major advising, and to show students that it's possible.
At CUNY, we try really hard to do that by showing the examples of students who have gone before, by fundraising outside, by working on exchange programs.
We have a lot of exchange programs.
One of our campuses deals with almost 60.
exclusively exchange programs and sends hundreds of students abroad that way, allowing students to pay that same CUNY rate at home as they would abroad, and that as they would if they stayed at home.
And that has been a tremendous boon.
Another campus has partnered with an external organization to give scholarships directly to their students, and that also has raised the numbers.
CUNY needs to, each of our colleges need to create these partnerships to find ways to make it most affordable.
That is probably the number one barrier for our students.
And behind that is probably our academic barriers.
We can work to lower those somewhat easier, actually, by talking to our departments around.
But one other thing that works is simply by changing the culture.
Simply by showing students that it is possible, by showing students that, oh, your peers have gone, everybody's going, you should go too.
And although that does require the students then to sometimes find those funds, it's amazing.
They do.
When they realize this is something important, when they realize this is something that helps their life move forward, helps their academic career and their professional career, they find the way.