An investigation into the mobility, and the motivations that underpin the mobility, of International Baccalaureate Diploma alumni from Frankfurt International School

Abstract

For more than 50 years, the International Baccalaureate (IB) has been awarding the IB diploma, a pre-university qualification offered now in over 4,000 schools in more than 150 countries. One of the attractive features of the IB diploma is that it can facilitate access to tertiary education in many countries around the world. However, there is limited understanding of the mobility of IB diploma holders, both in terms of where they go for tertiary education as well as the motivations behind their mobilities. Frankfurt International School (FIS) has been offering the IB diploma qualification since the program’s inception in 1970, with more than 2700 alumni having earned an IB diploma over the past 50 years. Given such a large quantity of alumni, this school proved to be an ideal case study in which to examine the mobility of IB diploma alumni from one IB diploma programme (IBDP) school. The study follows a mixed method approach with the mobility of the IB diploma alumni as a revelatory case study, combining a quantitative survey consisting of 106 alumni from 52 different years of the IB diploma alumni from FIS, with follow up qualitative semi-structured interviews from 47 alumni who participated in the quantitative survey. The findings that emerged from the study suggest that regardless of their passport at the time of graduation, over 90% of the alumni who participated in the study chose not to stay in Germany to continue their education, with slightly more than half of the respondents attending a university in a country where they did not hold a passport. Most alumni who participated in the survey chose universities in Western countries, particularly the US, UK, Canada, and the Netherlands. From this perspective, at FIS the IB diploma acts not as a global academic passport but rather as a global positioning strategy (GPS), especially for movement to Western countries. The motivation for mobility among the alumni who were interviewed centred around three main themes: 1) how the alumni created meaning and identity through multiple types of privilege afforded by attending the school; 2) the financial opportunities, or limitations to be able to use the IB diploma to gain access to tertiary education in countries outside of Germany; 3) having a particular match with a certain country location. The alumni acknowledged that they have lived in a bubble of privilege during their time at FIS, with many only coming to this realization years after graduation. Finally, alumni indicated feeling local in multiple locations, and the term multilocal might be appropriate way to describe an IB diploma alumnus from FIS. While the findings are limited to FIS, the study may be informative for other IBDP schools or other international schools seeking to understand the mobility of their alumni.

Date of Award	22 May 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Mary Hayden (Supervisor) & Jeff Thompson (Supervisor)