International Education for Low-Income Students: Virtual Exchange and the Academic Success Among Pell-Recipient Community College Students

Objective/Research Question: This study explores the potential for virtual international exchange to serve as a high impact practice that improves academic outcomes, defined credential completion, and GPA among low-income students enrolled at two community colleges in the U.S. Southeast. Specifically, we ask: What is the relationship between participation in virtual international exchange and two key indicators of students’ academic success, last-recorded cumulative GPA and credential completion, among community college students who receive Pell funding compared to those who do not? We adopt a capability approach to frame our work, which focuses attention on what low-income students are able to achieve when provided with opportunity rather than a lack of social status or financial means. Methods: Drawing data from 26,748 students, we use propensity score weighting to account for observed differences in virtual exchange participants and non-participants prior to estimating a series of linear regression models predicting a student’s credential completion and last-recorded GPA. Results: Our findings suggest that virtual exchange participation has a positive relationship with both measures of students’ academic success, credential completion and GPA. Conclusions/Contributions: Our results highlight the success that students are capable of when provided with the opportunity to engage with a high impact practice on their home campuses and have implications for both community college international educators and administrators.