STUDY ABROAD

According to this article, “the number of American students of college age or older studying abroad has more than doubled, from 71,154 in the 1991-92 school year to 154,168 in 2000-01. That is only a small percentage of the 9 million full-time undergraduates in America, but it is an important trend.”

My calculator says those studying abroad are equal to 1.7 percent of the number of U.S. undergraduate college students. If one assumed that “junior year abroad” was the standard, then one might expect one-quarter of all undergraduate students to be studying abroad.

However, the number studying abroad should include graduate students as well. I would certainly hope that a large portion of doctoral students study abroad, and masters students in many fields would also benefit.

It seems to be that 154 thousand students abroad is so low a number as to be almost a crisis level. The world’s greatest economic and political power certainly needs international experience. Part of that experience is obtained by immigration. On the other hand, the frequency of international study in the past was even lower than today, and we should be playing catch-up.

Moreover, most knowledge creation is occurring outside the borders of the United States. Gone are the post World War II days in which two-thirds or more of scientific activity worldwide occurred in the United States. While modern communications have improved our ability to obtain knowledge from abroad, much knowledge is tacit, best obtained in face-to-face interaction (or shoulder-to-shoulder interaction in the lab). Graduate education abroad is again an important source of scientific, technological, and academic knowledge for the U.S.