Literature Review Blog Post #1

Ma, Yingyi, and Martha Garcia-Murillo, editors. Understanding International Students from Asia in American Universities: Learning and Living Globalization. Springer International Publishing AG, 2018.

About the Book 

This book is about international students from Asia studying at American universities in the age of globalization. This book argues that it is urgent to change the traditional framework of Asian international students that requires active efforts to elicit successful experiences from international students. It explores multiple questions, such as: Why do they decide to study in America? How do they integrate with domestic students, and What are the difficulties for intergroup friendship? How do American faculty members respond to a growing number of Asian students? Have American universities provided them with the skills they need to succeed? Do Asian international students prefer to stay in the U.S. or return to their home country? 

Authors [Editors]

Yingyi Ma is the Director of Asian/Asian American Studies and an associate professor in Sociology at Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. In 2014, she was named Inaugural O’Hanley Faculty Scholar. She has also been co-chair of East Asia SIG of Comparative and International Education Society. She is a sociologist of education and migration. Her current research examines international student mobility, Asian international students in the United States and the surge of Chinese international students in American Universities. 

Martha García-Murillo is a Professor and the director of a master’s program at the school of information studies where she facilitated a program on leadership for the students in that program, most of whom were international students. The need and success that she had with the program prompted her to write a book on Leadership and Culture-geared towards addressing the most pressing needs for our international students. 

Key terms 
"Neo-racism"
: discrimination based on one's skin color and country of origin and on the relationships between countries
"Human Capital Theory"
: a knowledge and acquired skills a person has that increase his or her ability to conduct activities with economic value
"From elites to the marginalized"
"Globalization and International Student"
"Student mobility"

Quotations
→ “Exclusively focusing on an economic perspective, human capital theory assumes that individuals have incentives to invest their time and money in education when they expect the benefits of having education are greater than the costs or the cost-benefit ratio for the investment in education is greater than that of other alternative investment opportunities" (Paulsen 1988,  46).

→ “I argue that Korean students might face adjustment difficulties similar to other East Asian international students due in part to the shared cultural values such as collectivism. However, these problems should be framed within the specific situational and cultural contexts of Korean students, rather than treating them as part of an Asian international student monolith” (Kim 292).

→ “People have different perspectives about you. You can argue about ideas, you can argue about opinion, but it’s very, very difficult to change perspective.” Ting realized she had underestimated how hard it would be for her to get to know, at a deep level, people from different countries, especially from the United States. “But when I come here, I am the minority. It’s really not that easy. You never really understand until you experience it” (Ting 366)

Value
This book can help me explore my research questions because it provides me with a lot of information from international perspectives of understanding American universities. Since this book also contains different topics that international students may face, it would be a great opportunity to look at various challenges that they are experiencing.