Bret Shaw

International education may be at its most unexpected – and its most effective – when offered to student populations who typically lack access to any form of higher education at all. As evidence, an agricultural university in Costa Rica's Caribbean countryside is recruiting young leaders from underprivileged communities across the developing world and quietly cultivating agents of social change.

Costa Rica has one of the best educational systems in Latin America and is among the happiest, safest, most tolerant and most sustainable countries in the world. The country is also home to an unexpected site of internationalisation and South-South cooperation at an agricultural school in the remote province of Limón.

EARTH University (Escuela de Agricultura de la Región Tropical Húmeda, or ‘Agricultural School of the Humid Tropics’), is home to about 40 academics and 400 students who together represent more than 50 nationalities, predominantly from across Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. This tight-knit academic community has sustainability and student support foremost on the agenda.

Each year, EARTH professors travel to underprivileged and often remote areas in developing countries to interview potential students as part of a rigorous selection procedure for EARTH’s four-year undergraduate Bachelor’s programme in Agricultural Sciences. The process aims to evaluate prospective students’ potential to make an impact in their home countries upon completion of their studies. Aspects such as entrepreneurialism, leadership potential and a feeling of social and environmental responsibility are important traits that are sought in the selection process and subsequently developed during the programme.

Despite English typically being taken for granted as the lingua franca of international education, EARTH's curriculum is taught entirely in Spanish. Students who come from countries where Spanish is not the native language – 25% of EARTH’s student body – take a four-month immersion course in Spanish to facilitate communication with their native Spanish-speaking peers.

Students generally come from vulnerable and marginalised populations, and 85% come from rural areas. More than 80% of students receive scholarships, with the rest receiving significant financial aid, empowering promising young leaders from economically underprivileged communities. About 85% of these students – who would not normally have access to higher education, let alone international higher education – successfully graduate from the programme.

Importantly, 82% of students return to their home countries after graduation. This success is thought to be attributable to the rigorous selection process, the holistic educational model, the methodology of experiential and student-centred learning, the development of a sense of social and environmental responsibility, the generous scholarship programme and the continuous ongoing contact with graduates via the alumni programme. Students are selected for their motivation to be agents of change in their home communities, and at the end of the programme they feel empowered to do exactly that.

The attention to entrepreneurship in the light of intercultural collaboration is another important factor in the success of this programme. The focus in these students’ home regions is on making human progress and reducing poverty. By combining sound insight into agricultural practices with a sharp business acumen, EARTH students are better able to recognise opportunities that are more likely to be embraced as innovative practices in their home countries.

Entrepreneurship is thus integrated into coursework at EARTH, fostering international collaboration in team projects in which students work with their peers to develop a viable business enterprise. Students report that working cooperatively with peers from different cultural backgrounds as a cohesive unit provides them invaluable insights into the perspectives of team members from other countries. The experience sheds light on how their own views are informed by their cultures and past experiences. Students learn tolerance and appreciation for other perspectives, as well as how to collectively contribute to the success of the entrepreneurial project with shared governance. Students utilise the available diversity to benefit the task at hand. Important lessons are also learned in what can be challenging, but ultimately rewarding, tasks that raise awareness about more universal goals such as providing equal opportunity regardless of gender or ethnicity.

Another strong feature of the programme, which contributes significantly to developing students’ confidence and their ability to relate to and work together with people from other cultures, is that the EARTH curriculum includes a mandatory academic internship programme. Students take a preparation course to facilitate and support their search, but the emphasis is placed on students’ own responsibility to arrange internships in their area of interest. Many use this opportunity to go back to their home countries and (re-)establish professional relations, but even more students use the internship to go to a third country in search of knowledge and perspectives that are not available in their home countries. Such students often intend to return to their home countries after graduation with specific niche expertise that will allow them to contribute to the sustainable development of their own communities.

The strength of resolve of these students to succeed is remarkable. Considering that they are almost all from developing countries, it is quite striking that students succeed in finding internships all over the world (in over 65 countries), in most cases with their expenses paid for by the host organisation. In addition to working full-time, each student completes 65 hours of community service at their internship location, thus connecting their host organisations with the communities and strengthening the sense of social responsibility of the companies and the students. The internship is a unique opportunity for experiential global learning and personal development, offering students an irreplaceable preparation for their professional future. This second layer of international mobility – students on internships and faculty members visiting them – constitutes not only further internationalisation of the academic programme, but also contributes to EARTH’s global impact in the form of spreading ideas for the betterment of humankind.

This academic community is a great example of South-South collaboration. The contributions made to the home countries of the graduates is palpable, and as such, contributes to the primary mandate of EARTH University: to host young people to make them capable of leading positive change processes in their home communities, regions and countries.

There are many success stories among EARTH University’s 2230 alumni, perhaps best summed up by the following recent alumni statistics:

• More than 80% of alumni live and work in their country of origin, about 90% of whom work in agriculture, environment and community development;

• 67% report that they have created jobs;

• 68% report that they have had a positive social impact, and 65% say their impact is environmentally sound;

• 55% are volunteers in their community.

Through the impact of its alumni – students from across the developing world, educated in Spanish in a quiet corner of Costa Rica – EARTH University is stimulating sustainable development in rural communities in the developing world.

The university continues to succeed in its mission of preparing leaders with ethical values to contribute to sustainable development and to construct a prosperous and just society.

— NICO EVERS, ROBERT COELEN & BRET SHAW