[2] The Forum was first conceived in San Diego in May 2000 by a group of education abroad professionals who felt the field would require a stand-alone organization.
In July 2001, the decision was made to incorporate as the Forum on Education Abroad, and over the course of the next year, a Board of Advisors was created and the search for an executive director was launched.
In 2005 the Forum received recognition from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to serve as the Standards Development Organization (SDO) for the field of education abroad.
Brian Whalen, who had been serving as chair of the Forum Council, became president and CEO while continuing his duties as associate provost and executive director of global education at Dickinson College.
[7] The Code of Ethics that the forum developed as a response sought to offer colleges, overseas-study providers, and foreign host institutions a "compass" to guide their management of study abroad.
The Standards were created as a reaction to what was largely an unsupervised and unregulated field involving a variety of players with differing motives, backgrounds and approaches.
Additionally, here was also a push to address growing risk and liability concerns given the fact that while education abroad enrollment numbers continued to climb throughout the 1990s and 2000s, many U.S. colleges and universities were struggling with limited resources.
QUIP consists of a guided self-study and peer review process, resulting in a comprehensive report and recommendations in the areas of program design, evaluation and assessment, marketing and promotion, student advising, and resources and operations.