I’ve spent the past five years researching the impact of learning abroad programs on Australian students and Indonesian host communities for my doctoral research. I spoke with 85 Australian Acicis and New Colombo Plan (NCP) alumni and 72 Indonesian host community members across Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Bandung. Including the voices of host communities in Indonesia was important to me as they’ve often been overlooked in the academic literature and in DFAT’s NCP evaluations; yet, they offer significant insights into how our government’s most significant spend on learning abroad and public diplomacy is tracking with communities in our region.
When we consider the impact of programs like the NCP, a paradox emerges. On one hand, outcomes for Australian institutions and students are well documented: impacts on their lives, career trajectories and post-return pathways. By contrast, less is known about the impact of learning abroad on the many communities who host these students. For a program principally designed as a public diplomacy initiative to strengthen ‘people-to-people’ relations, shouldn’t we be interested in understanding how host communities experience learning abroad? Do these communities now view Australia and Australians more favourably? Are programs like the NCP effecting positive attitudinal shifts among host communities?
To tackle these questions, I wanted to understand more about the Indonesian ‘people’ in ‘people-to-people’ relations: in this case, Indonesian host community members. These communities are known by many names in learning abroad (for example, ‘partners’, ‘host institutions’, ‘providers’ and ‘local communities’). In my study, I use the term ‘host community’ to include: Indonesian student buddies, classmates, lecturers, language tutors, internship hosts, accommodation hosts and Acicis’ in-country staff.
While I focused on Indonesia, my findings offer useful insights as to how we might understand host communities’ experiences in other locations, including other Indo-Pacific countries hosting NCP students as well as learning abroad destinations further afield.
Findings from host communities
The hosts I spoke to shared a range of experiences, some consistent with findings from other studies, and others that were new. Below, I highlight three key themes and how researchers, practitioners, government and universities might respond.
1. Hosts need to be better prepared and debriefed in learning abroad
Just as our students need to be ‘orientated’ before and after a learning abroad experience, so too do participating host communities. Many hosts I spoke to felt unprepared for the influx of Australian students into their campuses, communities and workplaces. They weren’t provided any additional funding or training, as one former lecturer at a Yogyakarta university describes:
There are very clear targets from the [Education] Ministry around ‘internationalisation’. Yet there is no funding or training for lecturers on how to suddenly adjust classrooms to be more ‘international’, to teach to different styles and cohorts of students. (Interview, Yogyakarta, October 2022)
Likewise, hosts described receiving minimal preparatory information from Australian universities or DFAT about the goals and intended outcomes of NCP programs and internships. As one former internship host told me:
We never heard from DFAT, or directly from the universities in Australia. The first time we heard about the ‘New Colombo Plan’ was from our student- we didn’t know it was such a big program, or that it had these ‘people-to-people’ goals. (Focus group, Jakarta, October 2022)
To prepare hosts for a learning abroad experience, online ‘pre-hosting’ modules could be offered, just as institutions prepare students with ‘pre-departure’ modules. These modules should move beyond basic logistics, health, security and administrative issues to address more substantive topics such as DFAT’s public diplomacy goals, pedagogy, equality and inclusion as well as DFAT’s policies on Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Harassment. Modules could be designed for future NCP programs across all NCP locations, developed in collaboration with IEAA’s Learning Abroad Network. Following a hosting experience, hosts could be surveyed on their experiences or participate in focus group discussions, with their feedback used to directly inform subsequent learning abroad programs.
2. Engage with host communities as equal partners in learning abroad
Host community members frequently told me they wanted to be more involved in the learning abroad cycle: from design to implementation to evaluation. Yet, in most cases, they had limited input into design and were often only included at the in-country implementation stage. Some felt this as largely ‘transactional’ and not reflective of the deep relationship-building potential the program held, as this former internship host explains:
We have actually hosted many Australian students over the years so we have a lot of ideas for the internship program that we would like to share, but we’ve never been asked. We’ve never received a survey link [from DFAT] or been invited to participate in a discussion. (Focus group, Jakarta, September 2022)
There is a clear willingness among hosts to be further included in all stages of the learning abroad cycle. In the past, Acicis has conducted initiatives such as a ‘Partner Universities Conference’ to bring together university partners and gauge their feedback. This could be replicated for internship hosts as well as partner universities to involve hosts more meaningfully in the design and evaluation stages of learning abroad. This approach could be applied in other NCP and learning abroad destinations.
Australian diplomatic missions and visiting Australian university delegations regularly host NCP student and alumni gatherings across Indonesia as well as in other NCP locations. These events provide excellent opportunities to invite a greater representation of host community members, to recognise and celebrate their involvement and to ensure hosts feel valued as genuine ‘partners’ in the ongoing work of the NCP and similar programs. Government and universities need to engage more substantively with host communities from design through to implementation and evaluation, to ensure programs are mutually beneficial and that communities are working together as partners, as articulated in DFAT’s own guidance on Locally Led Development.
3. Include host communities in NCP longitudinal tracer studies
Finally, one clear finding from my study is the opportunity for DFAT to track the NCP’s impact over time through an ongoing longitudinal ‘tracer’ study, to include the voices of both students and hosts. The Australian Government’s large-scale ‘Australian Global Alumni Tracer Facility’, provides a useful comparative study, tracing international students who have studied in Australia. Tracking NCP change over time would serve as an invaluable resource for understanding broad scale trends in outbound student mobility, post-return pathways, impact on host communities, attitudinal shifts and contributions to bilateral relationship-building.
Acicis’ own ‘Alumni Tracer Study’ offers another useful blueprint; yet, DFAT has an unparalleled opportunity to understand learning abroad outcomes for students and hosts on a significantly larger scale, across 40 destinations through the NCP’s large and growing student and alumni community. Including qualitative data response fields in survey instruments and following up with focus groups and interviews would strengthen our understanding of how students—and hosts—experience change in their lives and ensure their voices are adequately captured in future accounts of the NCP.
Where to now?
As my research findings have shown, host communities have a wealth of knowledge, insights and experience to share when it comes to learning abroad. Including their views is not simply a ‘nice to have’: it’s essential to ensure learning abroad upholds its social license in the communities in which we operate, that Australia practises good public diplomacy in the region and that benefits flow to both students and host communities. Their perspectives are integral in meeting these goals.
As Labor takes up a subsequent term in government and the NCP enters its second decade, these insights from hosts are timely. With NCP reforms rolling out this year, including the perspectives of host communities on such a significant public diplomacy spend is crucial. As Australia’s own Foreign Minister Wong remarked last year, learning abroad is not only about young Australians travelling to the region, but also about deepening Australia’s relationships in the Indo-Pacific. Engaging with host communities in learning abroad not only makes for better programs, it makes for better partnerships.