Higher Education in a Global Society

Writing in The Chronicle Review, Graham Spanier addresses advancing the concept of a global education in the 21st Century.

Universities traditionally have taken a two-fold approach to internationalism: foreign student recruitment and study-abroad programs. These efforts have yielded some success. . . . Another way to make our universities more international is to integrate global perspectives into the curriculum. This shouldn’t be confined to one “International Perspectives” course within a major. It is crucial that humanities, social sciences, arts, and business course content reflect variations across countries, cultures, and time periods. . . . Fluency in a foreign language is a key component of an international education. . . . while the model of a semester or year abroad is still effective, it is important to offer additional experiential options in the summer and over holiday breaks so more students can participate.