Student travel Scott Ableman/Flickr
en English

The Power of Student Travel

Universities everywhere, well aware of how fast the world is changing, are seeking better ways to help their students to become responsible global citizens. Perhaps the most effective approach is to give students the opportunity not just to study the world, but to spend time physically exploring it.

BLOOMINGTON – The famously beautiful Indiana University campus, where I have been teaching a summer course for the new School of Global and International Studies, is now almost deserted. Most of its students, like their counterparts across the northern developed world, are taking these next months to flee to the four corners of the country, and the world. They may work, hold internships, participate in exchange programs, or visit family; but, as often as not, they are traveling for the sheer joy of it.

Those students going abroad this summer for no reason other than the thrill of seeing and living life in other places should not feel guilty about it. Even if it means chalking up more debt or missing summer course credits. They are bound to have formative experiences that will do more for their education, and life choices, than almost anything else they could do.

Conscientious universities everywhere, well aware of how fast the world is changing, are now working hard to find better ways to educate their students to become responsible global citizens. They are trying to internationalize their curricula to ensure that no one graduates without some serious knowledge about other countries and cultures, and some sense of global interconnectedness and interdependence. They are trying to ensure that domestic students share their study and social time with the international students living among them. And they are trying to give as many of their students as possible the opportunity to study and travel abroad.

https://prosyn.org/H5ansCR