Alexander Nichols
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Chris Marsicano
American higher education strives to promote global holistic human development. Due to differences in institution type, however, colleges and universities vary in how they encourage global engagement on campus. In this exploratory study, I extend upon the work of Evans, Marsicano, and Lennartz (2018) to examine the missions, infrastructure, and activities related to global engagement across postsecondary institutional characteristics. More specifically, I draw on neoinstitutional theory to identify indicators for global engagement across different types of institutions. By combining several data sources on a diverse set of institutions, I empirically demonstrate institutional isomorphism with respect to global engagement mission and decoupling of mission from infrastructure and activities. With few exceptions, findings suggest that global engagement looks largely the same throughout the higher education landscape. Such a finding has important implications for the role of certain types of institutions in contemporary American society, especially given the growing debates about the purpose of college.