“What is the farthest you have ever traveled?”
A potential employer asks the question first to the student holding a Duke degree. “I volunteered in Brazil researching indigenous medicine.”
The next interviewee is a graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill. “I went to Italy to perfect my Italian.”
Now enters the N.C. State graduate. “The furthest I’ve gone was Daytona Beach during Spring Break. But my friend went to Cancun!”
The sad truth is that NCSU students don’t get out much. Over 70 percent of the students at our neighboring universities spend at least some time studying abroad, thanks to university support and encouragement. But still less than 20 percent of our graduates can consider themselves “worldly,” most having never left the country, many never having left the state.
In a time when we compete against graduates from all over the world for jobs, having no world experience puts us at a serious disadvantage. Twenty years ago it was enough to take students to Harris Hall for a field trip. Teachers could point at the round building and say, “This is what a building looks like when it sinks in North Carolina.”
But that was then, and this is now. A graduate whose knowledge only applies to the context of his or her location and culture isn’t educated, but handicapped. Companies today work on a global scale and expect their employees to do the same.
The first week on the job a computer technician will have to collaborate online with their partner in India. The nuclear technician will be sent to Germany to examine containment units. The social worker will have to work with immigrants who only speak Spanish and don’t understand our American culture.
These jobs pay well. They are the types of jobs that give our University prestige once we fill them. These are types of jobs that students want to get and keep. And they are also the types of jobs we are unable to obtain.
NCSU bills itself as a leading university, yet it has been left in the dust when it comes to teaching techniques. International experience is so important to getting a good education that it’s almost a necessity.
Imagine a fresh crop of graduates. We grab our diplomas and start to compete for the same job with other graduates with the same GPA. As the world grows smaller, the hiring companies now look beyond just our students, but candidates from everywhere: Chapel Hill, China, England and India, for example.
Academically we may all look the same. But remember, more than 80 percent of our graduates have no experience working in international cultures.
So, when hiring, a hirer sees two candidates with the exact same academic record, but one studied abroad while the other stayed home. Who will they choose to hire to work with foreign clients?
Recently North Carolina and National Public Radio held a series of conversations aimed at figuring out what to do to keep our universities competitive. Apparently, people are worried that the playing field is level all over the world; NCSU will no longer make the cut. And they are right. We need to realize what the most prestigious colleges in the country have done for years – sending students to study abroad is now a basic component of higher education.
Ten years ago a person classified as “highly educated” knew the history of the world. Five years ago they knew the history and philosophy of the world. And today, a highly educated person must know even more than that: they have to know how to live and function globally as well.
Education lifts up society. As society assimilates more knowledge, what seemed like breakthroughs in the past are now just basic premises. To continue to advance we must push our knowledge standards continuously higher.
Part of “higher education” is remembering that “higher” is a relative phrase. It’s time our University reclaims its place among the prestigious institutes of higher learning and do more than offer highly designed study abroad programs by actually encouraging its students to take them. Only then can NCSU call itself an institute of higher learning. And only then will our graduates be able to get hired with other worldly students.
E-mail Katie your itinerary for studying abroad at [email protected].
