For many students, studying abroad is a desired experience — a once in a lifetime opportunity. Unfortunately, reports show that minority students may be hesitant to study abroad, and some Penn students have said they faced discrimination while overseas.
Penn’s Office of International Programs holds pre-abroad orientation sessions for minority students. It’s also trying to gather more data about the issue so that it can provide students with better information. These efforts are important, and as part of their research, we hope Penn Abroad talks to minority students who have experienced challenges abroad. This way, administrators will get a good sense of what students have been through and how the University could have been of more assistance.
Still, there is more the Office of International Programs can do to help minority students. The office needs to expand the amount of training it offers and it should heavily publicize the orientation sessions so that more students are aware of the resource. It also could provide more assistance to students once they are abroad to help them figure out difficult situations when they are actually experiencing them.
It’s a sad fact of life that minority students have been and will probably continue to be discriminated against in other countries. But students should not feel discouraged to study abroad because of the color of their skin. To combat this fear, students should know what kind of discrimination to expect and how best to handle it.
