Expansion in Study Abroad Opportunities Passes in House

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that legislation proposing to broaden the numbers of young Americans studying overseas has passed the House.

The legislation, which was named after Paul Simon, the late Illinois senator, was passed as a portion of a larger bill covering foreign policy.

The bill would create an independent government entity and would authorize $80-million in grants to individual students, colleges, and nongovernmental institutions that provide study-abroad opportunities. Funds for the new program, however, would have to be approved separately through the appropriations process.

If you have a particularly sharp memory, you'll remember a post I wrote last July that discussed Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) routine obstruction of this and other bipartisan legislation packaged together in an omnibus bill by Sen. Harry Reid. In case you don't, here's part of what I wrote:

One of the 35 pieces of legislation that was held hostage in the Republican-led procedural circus was The Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act, named for the late Sen. Paul Simon (D-IL). This legislation heavily consulted a report from the Commission on the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program. This commission evaluated the state of study abroad programs in the United States. The report found that certain demographics, such as low-income students, students with a minority background, and math and science students, had difficulty studying abroad. It also noticed that students mostly studied in Western European countries. The Simon Act sought to increase the number of American students studying abroad from 225,000 to 1 million, especially among the aforementioned groups, and promote other, less popular locations to students.

Like I noted in last year's post, study abroad programs have enjoyed immense popularity on American campuses since 9/11. Already an intensely multicultural generation, the Millennials who were politically tuned in at that time observed a politician holding hostage a program strongly reflecting Millennial values for his own ideological gain. The message was clear: pragmatism [Millennials] be damned.

Markos at Daily Kos wrote a post yesterday that touched on the GOP's misunderstanding of Millennials' values and priorities. I found one portion particularly striking.

Hence, the GOP is hopelessly out of touch with this generation. Its hostility toward the "alternate" -- whether race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality or whatnot, makes them look mean spirited and out of touch. Their overt anger at the notion of a global community, such as the "citizen of the world" thing that Reagan once championed but is now the subject of Newt Gingrich's ire, seems anachronistic to kids used to directly interacting with people all over the world. And while these youngsters are group-minded and embrace empathy as a tool of government, the GOP's close-minded rejection of such approaches is a genuine turn off.

Maybe the Republicans simply are too stupid to know they're totally rejecting the Millennial lifestyle. Or maybe they're doing it intentionally. Either way, the GOP obviously hasn't learned anything since Coburn's antics last year. And the data show that it is imperative for the GOP to reverse course and embrace the Millennial worldview if it has any hope of avoiding the fate of the Whigs.

The GOP can start small and use this opportunity presented to them with the study abroad legislation as a re-do. The House once again passed the Paul Simon Study Abroad legislation, and again, it will be sent to the Senate, going first to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Here's hoping that this program becomes law, allowing more youth to experience first-hand what the world has to offer.