As the international education community begins to emerge from more than a year of disrupted mobility, all eyes are on the data. You can be part of telling the story of what international education looks like by submitting your institution's information for the fifth edition of the ACE Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses survey.
Time is running out to complete the survey. Fill out this form to see if your institution has participated yet.
Just last month, the Institute of International Education (IIE) released findings from the 2021 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, which found new international students at U.S. higher education institutions increased by 68 percent, an increase from a 46 percent decline in Fall 2020. Seventy percent of U.S. higher education institutions report an increase in new international student enrollment.
ACE's latest Mapping survey will have a section on student mobility, while also exploring other areas of internationalization which will provide a more comprehensive look at how institutions are advancing internationalization strategies compared to previous years. This latest Mapping survey will be an important supplement to the IIE data examining how institutions are supporting international students compared to the last survey in 2016. For instance, only 13 percent of the institutions surveyed in 2016 reported offering international alumni services and 12 percent offered support services for dependents of international students. Student support in relation to the inequalities uncovered by the pandemic is a topic that ACE will explore in the 2021 survey.
ACE also hopes to learn more about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the international education community. The survey is designed to assess both how internationalization changed between 2016 and January 2020 (before the pandemic) and how it changed between February 2020 and the present. Other questions explore how institutions' internationalization efforts were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and help ACE learn how institutional leaders are rethinking internationalization priorities and strategies and what are some of the lessons they have learned during the pandemic that will inform their operations moving forward.
The 2021 survey was first launched in March and sent to chief academic officers nationwide, and then to senior international officers and institutional researchers. ACE is now reaching out to diversity officers and vice presidents of student affairs.
ACE wants to hear from all U.S. institution types and about all types of internationalization activities, even if you think your campus does not engage in many. If your institution has already completed the survey, thank you. If you are not sure whether your institution has participated, please complete this form to ensure your institution is included.