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The MEXUS Program
Purpose
The internationalization of business education has for the most part proceeded at a cautious and conservative pace. Originally, schools responded to the expansion of international business by offering courses in international marketing, finance, and management, all taught from a thoroughly U.S. perspective. Business students rarely traveled abroad. Eventually international study and internship opportunities began to appear in the business curriculum, but usually they were short and did not give students the in-depth training and experience they needed to do business in another culture. Along with other FIPSE-funded projects, MEXUS is in the vanguard of innovative international study programs. As the first undergraduate transnational dual degree program in the United States and Mexico, MEXUS provides total immersion training with the aim of producing not just American businessmen and -women with knowledge of international business but truly international managers.
Innovative Features
MEXUS is a binational undergraduate international business curriculum which integrates business, foreign languages, and regional and cultural studies. Through a consortial arrangement with universities on both sides of the border, it allows Mexican and U.S. students to satisfy degree requirements for the B.A. in international business as well as the licenciatura en negocios internacionales simultaneously. Students from both countries live and study in Mexico and in the United States a minimum of two years each, and complete an internship at the end of the second year in the host country.
The U.S. MEXUS partners are San Diego State University (SDSU) in San Diego and Southwestern College (SWC) in Chula Vista, Calif. The Mexican partners, both located in Tijuana, are the Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior (CETYS) and the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC).
The four partner institutions, located within a 15 mile radius, are members of large academic networks-SDSU is part of the 21-campus California State University system, and SWC is one of the 100 campuses of the California Community College system. Because academic requirements are articulated across campuses and course credits automatically transfer, MEXUS is easily accessible to vast numbers of U.S. students. On the Mexican side, CETYS is one of the founding institutions of the Federación de Instituciones Mexicanas de Educación Superior, a national network of prestigious private universities, and UABC is part of the university system of Baja California.
The creators of MEXUS had completed a great deal of groundwork before approaching FIPSE, garnering administrative support and drawing up preliminary agreements among the partners. After the FIPSE award, they finalized the consortium agreement, established the curriculum, recruited and selected students, and hired a coordinator, located at SDSU, to work with the four partner institutions and administer the project.
U.S. students who participate in MEXUS are overwhelmingly Hispanic-73 percent are Latino, 15 percent Anglo-Latino, and 12 percent Anglo. They demonstrate above-average academic performance, both in high school and college. Their average high school GPA is 3.6, and their class standing averages at the top eight percent of the class. The SAT average of MEXUS students is 120 points above the SDSU average. Their average college GPA is 3.4, versus an average SDSU GPA of 2.64.
Evaluation and Project Impact
During the project, MEXUS reached its enrollment goal of 120 students.
Project staff intended for all U.S. MEXUS students to take the modified CETSCALE Questionnaire, the Visual-Oral Communication Instrument, and the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages Oral Proficiency Interview before and after their stay in Mexico. It has, however, proved difficult to persuade returning students to take the posttests. In the case of the four students who have graduated to date, neither the cultural values nor the language proficiency posttests show significant change. This may simply be a reflection of the students' Hispanic background.
Lessons Learned
Given their experience with the project, the creators of MEXUS feel strongly that it is best to begin this kind of effort with a single partner. Multiple partners can complicate a program exponentially: in three years of FIPSE funding, MEXUS staff had to develop 11 different curricula. Every time a partner makes a change in the curriculum, the programs for new students change, and all students must be advised individually to ensure that they will be able to fulfill graduation requirements in a timely manner in both countries. This can prove overwhelming for the staff, and ultimately compromise the quality of instruction. In closely-integrated programs such as MEXUS, more is certainly not better.
Coordinating systems across such diverse institutions-public, private, two-year and four-year-proved more challenging than expected. This difficulty was compounded by differences in national, socioeconomic and academic cultures, in federal and state requirements in each country, in administrative procedures and in institutional missions. Each partner had to change many established policies to accommodate the project. The principal problems encountered at each institution exemplify the kind of stumbling blocks that projects such as MEXUS are likely to encounter.
At SWC financial aid is tied to enrollment in classes, and since the college has never had an international exchange program before MEXUS, there is no mechanism to document registration on the home campus while attending classes abroad, rendering MEXUS students ineligible for financial aid while they study in Mexico. To solve this problem, SWC students transfer to SDSU before beginning their Mexican studies and receive financial assistance from SDSU. This of course requires students to plan unusually far in advance.
In addition, while the consortium policy is that partners waive tuition for exchange students-students pay only at the home institution-this is not possible at SWC. SWC's board of regents approved in-state tuition for Mexican students, but this still meant that they had to pay two tuitions. In 1997 CETYS and UABC decided to eliminate home tuition payments for their students attending SWC.
At SDSU, when MEXUS began students studying abroad, they were eligible for financial aid for a maximum of one year only. The vice president for academic affairs successfully petitioned the Western Association of Schools and Colleges to allow SDSU to offer financial aid to MEXUS students during their second year abroad.
There was some disagreement among SDSU faculty about the appropriateness of granting two degrees-the B.A. and the licenciatura-for a single body of coursework. Using the European Union's SOCRATES and ERASMUS as points of reference, MEXUS staff justified the dual degree by arguing that: 1) The two degrees represent the same level of achievement, and thus should be considered "duplicate" rather than "additional." 2) The language skill demanded of MEXUS students is greater than that required for a regular degree. 3) MEXUS duplicate degrees require more credit than either the B.A. or the licenciatura alone. 4) Students could in theory complete the two degrees independently and without the knowledge of either institution.
UABC faculty were developing a degree in international business at the same time as they were instituting MEXUS. This taxed their academic and administrative resources and caused some of the classes that MEXUS students needed to be unavailable. These problems have since been resolved.
On the U.S. side, MEXUS has had difficulty recruiting students of non-Hispanic background, while on the Mexican side families are reluctant to let their daughters reside in the United States. Students from both countries have struggled to adjust to drastically different approaches to higher education-in Mexico, the European-style habit of placing responsibility for learning squarely on the student's shoulders, versus the structured, heavily monitored approach adopted by U.S. faculty.
Project Continuation
MEXUS has been institutionalized at all four partner institutions, and the coordinator's position at SDSU has been made full-time and permanent. The coordinator has been charged with expanding the dual degree to other disciplines and other countries. SDSU is currently finalizing curriculum and program design with institutions in France, Québec, Spain and Germany. Grant applications have been submitted to develop dual-degree international business programs in Brazil, Chile, China, Japan and Russia.
In fall 1997 the MEXUS/Women's Studies program, involving SDSU and UABC, was inaugurated. Graduates will obtain a B.A. in Women's Studies and a licenciatura in either sociología, economía, or psicología.
Project Recognition
MEXUS has been cited by Presidents Clinton and Zedillo and by the U.S. State Department as an example of United States-Mexico cooperation.
Available Information
Additional information is available from:
Michael Hergert
MEXUS Program
San Diego State University, BAM-427
6500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-7734
Telephone: 619-594-7297
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