Going global: American colleges and universities head to distant lands, and approach the challenge in markedly different ways.

These days, when U.S. colleges and universities talk about "going global," they may mean more than sending their students abroad in junior year, recruiting students from Europe, Asia, and Africa, or even piping their classes to Shanghai or Singapore over a broadband Internet connection. Some schools are setting up shop overseas to serve Local populations, either because they sense an opportunity, or because they've been invited by a host country in need of more education options. Still, it's hard to get a handle on how many schools have overseas branch campuses, because even accrediting bodies don't track those numbers.

"We know which of our institutions have locations abroad, but we don't formally collect data on whether any particular location serves only U.S. students," says Oswald Ratteray, assistant director for Constituent Services and Special Programs at the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (www.msache.org).

And at the North Central Association Higher Learning Commission (www.ncahlc.org), which accredits IHEs in the Midwest, Executive Director Steven Crow reports, "We're starting to see some increased action." Crow says he's getting three to four new requests a year to set up overseas programs. The colleges' motivations to set up such programs vary.

"We want to train global citizens, and want our students to understand different ways of thinking," explains Richard Meyers, president of Webster University in St. Louis, which operates overseas campuses in seven countries and has more than 2,000 non-U.S. students.

Then too, there are the dollars; sometimes surplus revenue from overseas programs helps to fund activities on the home campus. At William Woods University (M0), there are plans under way to establish a program in Thailand to offer a master's degree in education. "There's money in this for us," says Vice President Betsy Tutt. "We don't have a Large endowment." The business plan for the first year of the program shows it breaking even with 40 students and tuition revenues of $288,000. It should eventually be a moneymaker, says Tutt, if all goes well. Plans were delayed this year because of concerns about SARS, she explains, but she hopes to get the program under way during the next school year. Certainly, there are always obstacles in such ambitious undertakings, but those who have been involved in such initiatives can offer valuable direction.

WEBSTER U: PERFECTING PROCESSES

Webster University President Meyers recalls standing in an empty flew in Thailand in the Late 1990s with his vice president of Academic Affairs. "Remember in the movie Patton, when Patton went beyond his supply lines?" Meyers asked his colleague. "Do you think we've advanced beyond ours?"

At that point, Webster was about to expand into its sixth foreign country. Initially, the school had had a local partner, but they parted ways when Webster had the opportunity to take over the vacant real estate and build from scratch. Still the school had to obtain accreditation from Thai authorities as well as from its own U.S. accrediting body, the NCAHLC. What's more, the operation had to become self-supporting quickly, because all of Webster's ventures are funded by tuition dollars.

Fortunately, Like Patton, Webster prevailed. The Thailand campus launched in 1999 near the beach resort of Cha-Am, and currently serves 150 students. It joins successful Webster campuses in the Netherlands, England, Switzerland, and Austria; the university also operates an undergraduate business program in Japan and a graduate business program in China.

With programs designed to serve local students rather than U.S. students looking for a study-abroad experience, the university may have the most far-flung empire of any U.S. IHE. "Webster has done a superb job of capitalizing on global opportunities," says NCAHLC's Crow. "It's become a different kind of university." It has also become a well-oiled global education machine, with efficient systems and processes put together after years of inevitable trial and error.

For one thing, the school evaluates critical criteria before deciding to enter a new country. The political situation must be stable enough to ensure normal safety for faculty and students. Webster has declined overtures from such countries as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates. "We turn down more invitations than we accept," Meyers admits.

And there must be a clear unmet need. Webster's European locations have no shortage of universities but Meyers says there's stilt a vacuum in general liberal arts studies and a lack of flexibility in changing majors. "It became dear that a lot of Europeans were unhappy with the choices they had."

But even with solid partnerships in place, and criteria well checked beforehand, there are always surprises. The Chinese government, for instance, didn't know what to expect from Webster, the first school to establish an independent campus in the country. And they had no precedent to predict local reaction. "They capped us at 50 students initially, and 1,200 showed up" when the program opened in Shanghai in 1996, Meyers says. Chinese authorities loosened up after that; currently Webster University China has 350 students in three locations.

Once established, the global campuses also attracted students from Webster's U.S. branches. The goal is to have an 80/20 split between locals and U.S. students. While the China and Japan operations still serve only local students, Webster plans to send U.S. students to Shanghai starting in January.

"We resemble an international corporation in the way we're set up," Meyers says. The primary difference is that "we're OK if we break even. We've learned not to be concerned too much with the bottom line."

RIT: COUNTRY-BUILDING ABROAD

For Rochester Institute of Technology (NY), adventures in the Balkans began in 1994 with a call from officials of the Croatian government. Could the school help Croatia start privatizing higher education, and educate workers for a country in desperate need of redevelopment?

For the next three years, RIT worked with Croatia to design a hospitality management degree program based in Dubrovnik, the fairy-tale city that had been a tourist magnet before the war. "The tourism industry held the potential for Lots of employment, but it had to be rebuilt from scratch," says Francis Domoy, chair of RIT's School of Hospitality and Service Management.

The American College of Management and Technology, RIT's Croatian entity, opened in 1997 after being accredited by both U.S. and Croatian authorities. "We expected 75 students to enroll, and 175 showed up," says Domoy. "We underestimated the demand."

Now the program is up to 722 students, despite turning away at least half of those who seek admission. ACMT initially shared quarters with the Polytechnic of Dubrovnik, but with both programs bursting at the seams, RIT is renovating an 18th-century building donated by the Croatian government. "We're trying to retain its integrity," says Domoy, adding, "Thank goodness for wireless technology," which allows RIT to install the very latest computing equipment without tearing out the walls.

Students cover all their own costs, sometimes with help from families abroad. For the first two years, the Croatian government kicked in $1,500 per student, but that subsidy ended in 1999, and annual tuition is now $5,500. Students continue to feel they are getting value for their money: 78 percent find jobs in their field within six months of graduation.

Domoy estimates RIT has sunk $500,000 to $750,000 into the program, and while it produces an operating surplus, RIT has chosen to reinvest the proceeds rather than pay itself back. The school is now working with Kosovo, a nation in even more critical need of rebuilding. The initial proposal calls for a two-year associate program in business administration, and students will have the option to transfer to Dubrovnik to complete a baccalaureate.

Domoy admires the spirit of the Croatian students. "There's such a desire to be successful, and they don't take life for granted. They can speak three or four languages--that's a shocker! It really shows us where the new competition for U.S. business is going to come from."

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: ROTATING PROFS

The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business owes its two overseas campuses to the tiny European principality of Andorra, which in the Late 1980s asked the school to consider opening a branch there. "We went, and decided Andorra wasn't the best place, but we thought a European Location was interesting," says Associate Dean Bill Kooser.

By 1994, Chicago had opened its first branch campus in Barcelona; the second, in Singapore, followed in 2000. Each program serves 75 to 80 students a year, drawn from all over Europe and the Pacific Rim. In both, it runs an executive MBA program identical in curriculum and faculty to the one in Chicago.

"Chicago is using a very difficult model by serving the program entirely with its own faculty," says NCAHLC's Crow. He explains that most overseas campuses are at least partly staffed by adjuncts hired Locally.

"Yes, it's logistically difficult, but we thought it was the right way," Kooser says. The faculty rotate among the several programs that the GSB offers--not only the overseas programs but the Chicago-based executive MBA program and the full-time MBA program. "In any year, any of the faculty might teach at any of the campuses."

In both Barcelona and Singapore, students fly in for one week, every six weeks. They take two courses during the session, and it takes two sessions to complete those two courses. So, faculty assigned to the overseas campuses pop back and forth quite a bit, says Kooser--especially if they're assigned to both courses in the same school year.

Economics professor Lars Stole had a week in Barcelona, a week off, then a week in Singapore during a recent tour. "It didn't make sense to come back in between, so I traveled," he says. "The jet lag alone would have been very difficult."

Stole teaches microeconomics, the first class taken by each new group of students, and often ends up dining nightly with his students, as they get to know one another. Far from being hardship duty, the foreign teaching slots are coveted. "People in the economics group say, 'When you get tired, let us know'" Stole says. At least one professor is using his Singapore stints as an opportunity to expose his children to Chinese.

"Each faculty member brings teaching assistants," Stole adds. "The Ph.D. students consider it a plus. They find it a huge amount of fun."

JOHNSON & WALES: DO YOUR HOMEWORK

If an enterprising Johnson & Wales University graduate hadn't moved to Sweden with his honey--the school's first-ever Swedish alumna--the administration might never have considered opening a feeder program there. But he did, and while he was there, he started to recruit more Swedish students for his alma mater. Eventually, he persuaded the administration to Look into a foreign expansion campus, initially envisioned as the first of many.

The Swedish campus of Johnson & Wales opened in 1992 in the university town of Goteborg. Its complicated history has been "an incredible learning experience for administrators," says Erin Farrell, dean of International Programs, who ran the Goteborg program for seven years.

"The idea was that, as a group, Swedish students are worldly," says Farrell English fluency is almost universal, and Swedes are friendly to other countries and cultures. Study in the U.S. ought to appeal to many. The challenge? Local university education, while more academic and Less career-focused, is completely underwritten by the government, so Johnson & Wales would have to show Swedish students that its education was worth taking on financial burdens they could otherwise easily avoid.

Thus the Johnson & Wales Swedish business and hospitality program was born. It was originally a two-year curriculum, with students transferring to the U.S. to finish a baccalaureate. The program was staffed with U.S. faculty.

But troubles started almost immediately. The school's would-be local partner, the Institute of Higher Marketing, wasn't accredited, and its students didn't qualify for generous government grants that largely offset the cost of attending a private school. "That was killing us," Farrell says. So, Johnson & Wales forsook IHM to go it alone, and soon qualified to receive state financial aid. "Boom years for us," says the dean.

But fluctuations in the value of the Swedish krona and in the number of spots available at Swedish universities continued to hammer at the program, and enrollment has swung between 30 and 60. Because of these difficulties, the school has responded by cutting back to a freshman only program.

In retrospect, Farrell says, more homework should have been done before proceeding. In particular, the school might have picked a location with broader international appeal. Goteborg, while charming, is somewhat off the beaten path for the rest of Europe.

"It's not a winner from a financial perspective," she says. "It's still one of our more complicated products, but the benefits to the university are critical It gets a lot of support from the administration." The Swedish students are always among the strongest in their classes when they transfer to the U.S. program, Farrell notes. And every year, 20 to 25 U.S. freshmen head to Sweden for eight weeks during the spring semester.

VCU: PARTNER-FUNDED VISUAL ARTS 

In 1997, representatives of the Qatar Foundation called on Virginia Commonwealth University with a copy of the U.S. News & World Report "Best Colleges" issue in hand. VCU was tops in visual arts programs that year, and the foundation wanted to talk about having the school manage a visual arts degree program for Qatari students in the Persian Gulf country's capital, Doha. The program would be the first of a "best of the best" array of offerings from top U.S. universities, making up an "education city" that would be the legacy of the Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khlifa Al-Thani.

So far, two schools have set up operations--VCU and Cernell-Weill Medical. School. (NY), which was scheduled to move into its permanent Qatari home this fall after operating in temporary quarters for the first year. Texas A&M University has contracted to operate an engineering program, and the foundation is talking with several other schools for various additional programs.

Richard Toscan, dean of VCU's school of visual arts, says the most intriguing thing about the proposed graphic arts program was that it would target the tiny nation's women, and help bring them into the mainstream of the economy. "If it had been co-ed, we would have been much Less interested." (Cornell's program, while coed, is 70 percent women.)

VCU and Cornell have full control of curriculum and management of the schools, with the Qatar Foundation picking up all costs--buildings, faculty salaries, you-name-it. The schools get an annual management fee, which they can apply wherever needed, university-wide. Meanwhile, the Qatar Foundation has constructed an 80,O00-square-foot, state-of-the-art building for the visual arts program "that we would kill to have here [in the U.S.]," Toscan says. Nothing like a global ed partner with deep pockets.

So far, the VCU program has graduated 3g students, most of whom have found employment within the country's interior design and print industries, or with government ministries that need print materials. The school's capacity is 500, and 130 slots are currently filled. Cornell will graduate its first class of physicians in 2008, after they have gone through a two-year premed program and four years of medical school.

Meanwhile, VCU's 30 faculty and administrators in Qatar (drawn from its U.S. staff) are enjoying a comfortable life, even stationed so close to Mideast tensions. Toscan says the social liberalism of the country is about par with VCU's hometown of Richmond, and there's a full range of U.S. shopping and dining opportunities, including two Starbucks outlets. The architecture reminds him of "Irvine, California, with mosques and camels." He confides that persuading faculty to teach in the program hasn't been the challenge that he had feared. "We thought we would have trouble getting people to stay, but now it appears that we're going to have trouble getting them to leave."

Don't Miss These Global Initiative Tips from the Pros

* Choose your partners wisely, says Meyers at Webster University, Some of the school's foreign ventures are managed jointly with a school in the host country; for others, Webster is on its own. "If it's not the right partner, it's Like marrying the wrong person," Meyers maintains. Conversely, he points out, the right partner can lend instant understanding of the culture, the political climate, and the bureaucracy. The wrong partner may not come through with the right information at the right time.

* Start with enough administrators, offers Richard Tuscan, dean of the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, which has a branch campus in the Persian Gulf country of Qatar. "We thought we could run it like a department, with just a director, faculty, and a secretary. But if the whole structure had had a dean and an associate dean from the beginning, it would have made life much easier."

* Choose a location that will appeal to those from surrounding countries--not only to Local students, says Erin Farrell, dean of International Programs at Johnson & Wales University (RI), which operates a feeder program in Goteborg, Sweden. If the school had it to do over again, she says, it might have picked a more central location.

* Publicize your program well in advance, says Bill Kooser, associate dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, which operates campuses in Barcelona and Singapore. After not marketing "as early as we should have" in Barcelona, and getting sluggish registrations as a result, the school began recruiting in Singapore 18 months beforehand, and was turning away candidates before opening day.

Elizabeth Gardner is a Chicago-based freelance writer.