AFTERWORD
This study is not about the student travel industry. Rather, it is about culture and communication – and more specifically, about how industry culture is revealed in and perpetuated by communicative process. It simply uses the student travel industry as a data set. Even so, it is prudent to further comment upon this industry, whose various members and informants have contributed so much to this study, as well as to clarify the researcher's relationship to this industry and its members.
While teaching high school in 1974, I received a brochure from American Leadership Study Groups (ALSG) that advertised summer European study tours for high school students. Already an avid Europhile, I was familiar with previously existing programs, most of which catered to college students. However, it seemed to me that the ALSG flyer was unique. Not only did the company's programs offer students a chance to study, but to do so while traveling and "experiencing" various cultures. Here, I thought, was a sensible pedagogy, one that enabled students to transform vicarious learning into first-hand knowledge. Thus, in 1974, I took the first of my eventual twelve groups to Europe with the American Leadership Study Groups (ALSG) – for whom I subsequently became a part-time Area Representative in Tennessee, then Regional Representative for the Southeast Region, and finally the full-time Director of Regional Marketing and Public Relations (1986-1990).
As it turned out, the years of my association with this industry were its formative years, during which time I forged close relationships with its originators. As the industry grew, and particularly as it evolved "genetically," many of the people with whom I had worked at ALSG branched out to establish enterprises of their own. Most of these have been successful, and all have seemed committed to what this industry has done best since its outset: travel as pedagogy. Thus, although I was formerly employed solely by ALSG, I nonetheless knew and respected most of the founding members of the other companies. In fact, when this study began, I counted as personal friends a good majority of the industry's then-current elites – all of whom I both admire and respect for their collective illustration of how commitment and creativity can transform lives in service of an ideal, as they have manifested in conducting this business.
Even so, I have neither traveled nor otherwise been closely associated with this industry since I left it in 1990, since which time its membership – and to a degree, its practices – have changed somewhat dramatically. Thus, when I began this study, I assumed tabla rasa: that I would have to start from scratch in learning about the industry, even as I acknowledged that it would be impossible to completely erase my own experiences from my perceptive field. More importantly, I understood that there was an inherent risk in undertaking a study of this nature, in the sense that some of my eventual conclusions, regardless of their nature, were bound to rankle someone. Thus, every effort has been made to let the data – which was derived from in-depth interviewing and document analysis – speak for itself. My intention is not, nor has it ever been, to glorify and/or apologize for any individual entity or personality in this industry. Nor has it been to imply any other normative or valuative judgments of any kind. As is true with any group of individuals, each member entity has its own peculiar strengths and weaknesses, and each experiences its own set of opportunities and threats – regardless of the nature or the sources of same, be they confirmed or presumed.
Thus, the reader is asked to remain cognizant of the fact that this study represents one researcher's interpretation of the phenomena described, and that even though the conclusions reached herein are well-supported, it is also true that neither this nor any other study could account for every possible contingency. Finally, the reader is asked to acknowledge, as does the researcher, that even though this study implies that the past is prologue, it neither suggests that the present is monolithic nor that the future is pre-ordained.
Linda Lyle
May 1998