Sailing against the Wind: Marketing International Studies Degrees

We present the findings of survey research designed around questions related to International Studies programs in the United States. The main goal of this research is to determine the current enrollment challenges and strengths facing IS programs, while identifying common curricular features and structures of the major. The survey research also reports what strategies programs use to increase enrollment and improve the curriculum. We find that most programs in our sample report declining numbers of students. We identify external (enrollment declines, perceptions of effectiveness of the degree) as well as internal (low administrative support, curricular design, and program competition) forces at play in these declines. Among the options available to IS program administrators and professors, recruitment and curricular updates are perhaps the best options available to leverage for program survival and growth.