Global Education

First-time enrollment of international students at graduate schools in the United States grew 8 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to a study released last week. That is an increase over the 3 percent rise last year and the largest since 2006, when the number jumped 12 percent.

UW-Madison sent four official delegations to China over the last two years, accelerated research connections with the country and aggressively recruited Chinese students to study here.

Grand Valley State University and Calvin College are among institutions being recognized today for the number of students who study abroad, based on the 2011 Open Doors report.

As she moved from table to table, scanning the glossy brochures touting faraway lands at Tulane University's Study Abroad Fair, Alle Ehrhardt was clearly a woman on a mission. The freshman biology major didn't know where that mission would take her -- Ireland, perhaps, or South Africa or Paris, to name a few possibilities -- but she knew she had to go ... somewhere.

When Martin Meehan, chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, decided he wanted more foreign students, he sent deans and professors fanning across Asia, and even went to China himself to sign exchange partnerships with two prominent universities. But with just 3 percent of its students from abroad, UMass Lowell wants to do more.

It's a modern version of the quest for "gold, God and glory" that drove explorers overseas in centuries past. For the last decade, American college presidents have been obsessed with expanding abroad -- looking to tap new markets, spread the gospel of American higher education and leave a glamorous global legacy.

Over the last decade, universities spurred by dreams of global cachet - and, sometimes, by foreign governments eager to underwrite them - built or rented whole campuses and offered Western-style education abroad. But now some schools are running out of cash as they struggle to attract enough students and develop a viable business model.

Matt Holden remembers voices speaking in at least five different languages and accents making up a dinner conversation in Mongolia last fall.

Carnegie Mellon University and Rwandan President Paul Kagame announced plans Friday to open a branch campus in his country, making it the first American university to do so in central Africa.

New legislation, aggressive recruiting among reasons for new record