Not Exactly Philip G. Altbach and Patti McGill Peterson Philip G. Altbach is J. Donald Monan SJ professor of higher education and director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College. We are on the verge of a global century, and internationalism is in the air on American campuses. Everyone agrees that American students must be prepared for the global environment of the 21st century. No presidential speech or campus planning report fails to stress the importance of internationalizing the university.
Institutions proclaim various international initiatives.
But let's look behind the rhetoric. In fact, there are significant constraints in the internationalization of American higher education. In an era of budget cutting, most colleges and universities lack adequate financial resources for major international initiatives. And institutions with a lot of international activity on campus often lack a coherent strategic direction for these activities that would provide the connective tissue among them. Advocates of a global approach to training academic specialists, led by the Social Science Research Council, are opposed by experts who argue that in order to understand another culture it is necessary to know its history, language, economy, and culture and not just global issues and trends.