ACA’s US-based member organisation – the Institute of International Education (IIE) – is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. The world is a very different place to what it was 90 years ago, but the core mission of the Institute - fostering mutual understanding through education exchange – has remained as topical as ever.  

The Institute was founded in 1919 to counter the isolationism that was taking hold in America after World War I. In the 1930s IIE's first assistant director rescued European scholars from Nazism and after World War II the Institute helped the US Department of State to create the Fulbright Program as a central component of efforts to promote understanding between the US and other countries. During Apartheid, IIE provided opportunities for more than 1 600 black South Africans to study at US universities. Today, the Institute remains deeply committed to promoting international dialogue and collaboration.

IIE is an independent non-profit organisation, which manages over 250 programmes in the area of international education. It also supports the visibility of US higher education abroad, and publishes the annual Open Doors report on student mobility.

IIE