The Foreign Service Journal, June 2018

60 JUNE 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT ture kid (TCK) raising four TCKs of her own, highlights the challenges globally mobile students face when they leave the family unit for university. Those challenges include frustrations making U.S.-based friends, struggles with cultural imbalance and encounters withmental health issues. The “best fit” concept can help alleviate those challenges before TCKs ever walk into their first college class. Challenges of Searching from Afar For the Foreign Service kid, the col- lege search is often limited to knowl- edge of the Ivy League and the colleges their parents attended more than two decades ago. A mobile lifestyle pre- cludes taking a summer course at the local community college or participat- ing in the middle school trip to the nearby state university. And yet, come spring of junior year many students are expected to have a list of eight realistic colleges to consider apply- ing to by the beginning of their senior year. How can they compile that list? Possibly the worst tools to use are the many ranking systems that pop up in the news every autumn. Rankings do not measure the quality of the education provided in any useful way; they give no insight into student satisfac- tion with a particular school or degree, the likelihood of employment upon graduation or the diversity of programs available at the school. To understand how universities manipulate their rankings, take a look at the 2017 article by Northeastern Univer- sity President Emeritus Richard Free- land in The Chronicle of Higher Educa- tion (“Stop Looking at Rankings. Use Academe’s Own Measures Instead”). Another ineffective strategy is to look Possibly the worst tools to use are themany ranking systems that pop up in the news every autumn.