Students have long opted to go abroad for a semester or a year as part of their undergraduate educational experience. But now their schools are going overseas, too, as this NYT article explains: “Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad.”
In a kind of educational gold rush, American universities are competing to set up outposts in countries with limited higher education opportunities. American universities — not to mention Australian and British ones, which also offer instruction in English, the lingua franca of academia — are starting, or expanding, hundreds of programs and partnerships in booming markets like China, India and Singapore.
It’s not going to be a simple matter to accomplish. But I like the idea of exporting US higher education. We’ve already made an indelible mark on so many other cultures through our commercial influence — not to mention military presence — and our system of higher education offers what I’d like to think of as the best view of our culture. It’s a side of of “us” that we can all be proud of, and the effects of spreading “American” education around the world could turn out to be far more positive and meaningful in the long run than anything else we’ve done.
I know I’m biased, as a former teacher, but I believe learning is almost always a good thing.
