The Globalization of History

Two decades ago the internationalization of history was so new a phenomenon that the leader of the American Historical Association thought it worth noting in his presidential address that some 500 members of the organization now had overseas mailing addresses. (Today the number is 1,033.) Since then internationalization has proceeded apace. AHA conventions regularly feature sessions with names like these, which I pulled from recent AHA program guides: "Commodities in Global History" (2009), "Globalization: The State of the Field in Asian Histories" (2008), and "Twentieth-Century Sexualities, a Global Perspective" (2007).

While the history profession was being internationalized, so were universities. Thirty-five years ago when I was an undergraduate at Vassar there were just a handful of foreign students on campus. Today at schools across the country foreign students make up a sizable proportion of the student body. The latest figures show that nearly 700,000 international students are studying in the United States.

How did this happen? If you had asked me a week ago I would have told you it was a result of the large forces we read about in the paper: a rising middle class in third world countries, the end of the cold war, and so on. But attendance at this year's NAFSA convention in Vancouver, BC, convinces me that one of the key reasons for the change is that there is a large and growing army of educators and tradespeople working feverishly to bring about the internationalization of universities.

NAFSA (nee National Association of Foreign Student Advisers) is the largest organization of international educators in the world. At the Vancouver convention some ten thousand people from around the world showed up. Walking through the hallways I heard French, German, Arabic, Chinese and other foreign languages. It was the most cosmopolitan place I've ever visited save for the UN when I was twelve.

Unlike our history conventions the emphasis at NAFSA's annual meetings is on the practical. Seminars help educators recruit students from Latin America, prepare visas, and detect fraudulent documents from China. At a panel on "Global Citizenship" a professor from Dartmouth explained how he had set up a program to help foreign students find homes with local New Hampshire families. Another member of the panel, decked out in full military regalia, explained how West Point's foreign academy exchange program works. (West Point has been accepting foreign cadets since the 1880s, and now sends 150 American cadets abroad annually.)

The exhibition hall is where the main action seems to take place. This is where the attendees gather, chat, and network. More importantly, it's where the vendors set up their booths. It is by visiting the booths that one becomes aware of just what a vast machine NAFSA has become facilitating student travel abroad.

Looking out across the vast expanse of the convention floor there are 210 booths and a sea of flags featuring countries with large commitments to study abroad. Mexico's was especially extravagant, with such a long row of desks and friendly staffers that I thought for a moment that I had stepped into a major travel office.

Roughly speaking, the booths are divided into two kinds: those catering to foreign students wishing to study in the United States and Americans who want to study abroad, the more popular category.

To entice students to come to the United States companies are using an elaborate and inventive array of marketing tools. Perhaps the most interesting is the VSF--the Virtual Student Fair. This is exactly what it sounds like. Through various come-ons the companies attract thousands of students to attend a fair featuring virtual booths hosted by schools seeking students. For twelve hours or more the students are able to chat with school reps online. The fairs are big business. Six thousand registered to attend one virtual fair held for Latin American students, with more than 1400 students actually showing up (virtually). The schools paid between $5,000 and $7500 per booth. One company I spoke with bragged that its fairs attract 50,000 students.

The ways the companies attract students is nearly endless. One company publishes 500,000 copies of a magazine written in multiple languages that goes out to 20,000 distribution points around the world. Another company is using quizzes on Facebook (of course) to draw students. To answer the questions the student has to go to the company's website, which features profiles of American schools that have paid to have their programs advertised. Students who answer the questions in a certain period of time are given points that can be redeemed for prizes and scholarships. Predictably, the company even has an iPad app.

It's not just private companies that play in this international sandbox. So does the United States government, which hosts one of the largest exhibits, Education USA, which is run by the State Department. Education USA helps foreign students learn how to get a visa, choose a college, and enroll in an English language program. It's hugely popular. I was told there are 450 USA Ed Centers across the world. At the small centers students get one-on-one help from knowledgeable experts. At the larger facilities students are simply given access to well-stocked libraries.

Just how big is this big business? Students from India alone, I was told, annually spend more than a billion dollars on education in the United States. Whether this is true, I have no way of knowing. It's an estimate to be sure. But it seems reasonable. Two years ago 100,000 applications a year were coming in from students in India hoping to study in the US. (The number declined to 70,000 in the past two years, in part because of the economy, and in part because Australia eased visa requirements to increase enrollments. This year applications reportedly rose after Australia imposed some restrictions.)

NAFSA was started in 1948, but it has only been in the last thirty years or so that it has become a goliath, helping change the complexion (literally) of the student population at colleges and universities dramatically. In a school of twenty thousand it's no surprise to discover that more than 1,000 come from foreign countries. Schools prize these students, who bring an international flavor to their campuses and cold hard cash. Some schools today would cease to exist but for their foreign students.

The effect of all of these foreign students on the history profession? One effect is obvious. The students in our classrooms no longer can be counted on to have grown up on the stories of Paul Revere. Judging from recent headlines not even our American-born politicians can be said to have a sure grasp of basic American history or even know who Paul Revere was warning. But foreign students certainly cannot be expected to know who he was--or care.

Globalization studies, which once seemed a sign of the profession's farsightedness, now are an essential part of the curriculum. It is tempting to think that abstract forces are responsible for the change. But my NAFSA visit convinces me that a network of evolving institutions and companies have also had a significant role.