Internationalization is an emphasis in nearly all curriculums, both through encouragement of foreign language skills and cross-cultural study. Still, in most cases those curriculums with a foreign language requirement allow students to place out of classroom study through either Advance Placement or a diagnostic test. But the movement is toward requiring some kind of course work in foreign languages. For example, Peterman said Penn is currently looking at its foreign language requirements and is collecting data on how many students place out and avoid classroom experience. Others such as Cornell and Harvard already make it difficult to place out of the requirement.
Curriculum requirements for cross-cultural analysis also provide an international focus.
Anne Allison, a Duke cultural anthropologist who is on the curriculum committee, said she saw departments at other universities responding to cross-cultural study requirements in innovative ways. And in my field of cultural anthropology, I saw departments coming up with new courses that would appeal to students and bring in non-majors. Penn, Johns Hopkins and MIT are among the universities with these requirements. Others such as Stanford have writing requirements within the major. Ethical inquiry comes under many different names at different universities, but typical is Harvard's Moral Reasoning requirement.