ABSTRACT
For the past quarter century and more, policy statements have announced the need to enhance the role and reputation of study abroad in the American academy. Study abroad advocates have stressed the goal to educate globally competent citizens capable of functioning in an interdependent world. They have called for 10 percent of U.S. undergraduate students to study overseas by the year 2000, yet statistical reports since then reveal that the goal has not been reached. The numbers continue to convey how marginal a role study abroad plays within American higher education. Only 2.71 percent of all full-time undergraduates at American two- and four-year institutions study overseas. Indeed, whether commenting about study abroad or the broader issues of campus internationalization, authors such as Philip Altbach have explicitly recognized that “reality lags considerably behind rhetoric.” 1 Sheila Biddle titled her 2002 book Internationalization: Rhetoric or Reality. 2 There have been plenty of calls to recognize the significance of international education in American higher education, plenty to include study abroad as part of new academic initiatives. Still, study abroad remains at the periphery.
