study abroad

The Student Diplomat Video Contest, jointly sponsored by NAFSA and Abroad View Magazine (and previously blogged at FM here), has asked American students to create original videos demonstrating advanced global understanding based on their study abroad experiences. While the contest yielded dozens of submissions, NAFSA and Abroad View have pared the list to five finalists.

In order to select a winner, organizers of the contest are asking the public to cast their votes – no later than January 15 – for their favorite video by visiting the Official Contest Page. The contest asked students to consider how their study abroad experience has shaped them as global citizens, served as a bridge to cross-cultural understanding, promoted peace, or positively impacted the local community in which they studied.

The winner, selected by public voting and an expert panel of judges, will be announced on Monday, January 18, and will receive a $300 cash prize and the title of "2009 Student Diplomat."

Pay a visit to the contest page today and vote for your favorite video!

Have you studied abroad and want to tell people about it? NAFSA (the Association of International Educators; formerly the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers) is asking those students who have studied outside of the United States, or who are currently studying abroad, to submit videos of themselves discussing their experiences.

Videos should focus on how their experience has helped to advance global understanding. Participants are encouraged to consider how their study abroad experience has shaped them as a global citizen, served as a bridge to cross-cultural understanding, promoted peace, or positively impacted the local community in which they studied.

NAFSA asks that videos should be no longer than three minutes. The deadline for entries is 11:59 p.m. on November 6, 2009. The videos should be recorded, uploaded to YouTube, and then uploaded to the contest's group page at YouTube.

Here is a video promoting the contest:

The winner will receive $300 cash and the title "2009 Student Diplomat." Good luck!

Last week I wrote about the House passing the Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act. Because I failed to detail the bill then, I want to now examine the ramifications of the legislation's passage this week, reiterating why it is so important to today's young people.

According to the Institute of International Education, there are three times as many foreign students studying in the United States as there are Americans studying abroad. And those Americans who do study overseas can't help but go to the beautiful cities/cultures they're exposed to in today's media - cities with economies that are functional and developed. (I certainly am not implying that this is a wrong choice, but merely noting that it's natural for students to want to see romanticized cultures described to them for most of their lives.) The Paul Simon legislation not only seeks to balance those Americans studying abroad with the number of foreign students studying in the United States (it will do so over ten years), but it also wants to diversify locations across the world. Europe and Australia might still be popular, but hopefully options in underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia will grow in popularity as well.

Of course, the legislation's main benefit to students and institutions, as cited last week, is the funding commitment. More opportunities will be offered to students should the bill be signed into law by President Obama, thanks to the injection of millions of dollars into the process. In return for the funding, though, institutions will be expected to examine common barriers to students studying abroad on their individual campuses and finding solutions for those problems.

If passed, the legislation would create other initiatives that fortify the U.S.'s presence in the world, especially among young people. In addition to study abroad provisions, the legislation adds 1500 Foreign Service Officers and modernizes the diplomatic corps. From a House Foreign Affairs Committee press release:

Among other significant measures in the bill are provisions that:

• strengthen the arms control and nonproliferation capabilities of the State Department

• reform the system of export controls for military technology and improve oversight of U.S. security assistance

• ensure that the United States will meet its financial commitments to the United Nations (U.N.) and other international organizations

• allow financing the refurbishment of helicopters for U.N. peacekeeping missions in Darfur, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other peacekeeping missions authorized by the U.N. Security Council

• establish the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation as a new executive branch corporation to expand dramatically the number and economic diversity of U.S. students studying overseas

• substantially increase the budget of the Peace Corps to support President Obama’s goal of doubling the number of Peace Corps volunteers, and authorize a plan to use short-term volunteers to respond to humanitarian and development needs

• broaden the Merida anti-drug trafficking initiative to include the Caribbean, and improve monitoring and evaluation of Merida programs

• and increase resources and training for enforcement of intellectual property rights, especially in countries identified by the U.S. government as lax in enforcing those rights.

NAFSA has been doing a fantastic job of outreach and education on this bill. Their release on the House's passage of the bill can be found here. NAFSA has made an online guide to the bill, while also creating a Facebook group to track its progress with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where it heads next.

There's no doubt young people would benefit from this bill, especially given how much it does target multicultural, compromising, and pragmatic millennials. There's no reason for the legislation to run out of time this session. We'll keep an eye on this as it moves on to the Senate. In the meantime, be sure to take advantage of NAFSA's coverage above.

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.

Bumped. Great stuff as usual. --Mike

We know by now that Millennials are pragmatic by nature. They are not concerned as much about ideology as they are progress. They would much rather cooperate with all the stakeholders in a given problem, compromise, and patch together a solution that accommodates everyone. We also know that many Millennials are frustrated by politics because they feel their issues are not seriously addressed by older politicians.

Yesterday, the Senate voted on the Advancing America's Priorities Act, an omnibus bill consisting of some 35 different pieces of legislation packaged together by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Many of these bills were crafted in a bipartisan fashion, with fifteen of the 35 bills being sponsored by Republicans. These bills promoted targeted medical research, protected children from being exploited online, and, the subject of this post, increased assistance for college students wishing to study abroad. With each of these bills receiving broad, bipartisan support in the Senate, you may ask why they were all packaged together in a hurried vote prior to the summer recess. Enter Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).

Senator Coburn is upset that the Senate is taking its focus off energy issues to vote on these bills.

When the Congressional Budget Office reported to Reid that his recent legislation would cost $10 billion to implement over the next five years, Coburn wrote Reid a letter suggesting that $45 billion in federal spending that he considered wasteful could be used to offset the costs of carrying out his omnibus package. Coburn, known for copiously holding numerous pieces of legislation from reaching the debate floor out of symbolic objections, has not openly expressed his displeasure with any of the specific bills in Reid’s omnibus, he said in a recent statement that he views it as a distraction from the Senate’s current energy debate.

Emphasis added.

A friendly civics reminder on Senate rules to those reading:

Senate procedure depends not only on the rules, but also on a variety of customs and traditions. In many cases, the Senate waives some of its stricter rules by unanimous consent. . .

A "hold" is placed when the Leader's office is notified that a senator intends to object to a request for unanimous consent from the Senate to consider or pass a measure. A hold may be placed for any reason and can be lifted by a senator at any time. A senator may place a hold simply to review a bill, to negotiate changes to the bill, or to kill the bill. A bill can be held for as long as the senator who objects to the bill wishes to block its consideration.

Coburn is the senator who placed the hold on this particular package of legislation. Any legislation that is held can only be debated by the Senate should the motion to proceed with debating the legislation be passed. If there is no unanimous consent (which there isn't in this case since Coburn objects), an end to the debate on whether to proceed or not (cloture) must be approved with 60 votes. The motion for cloture on the motion to proceed failed yesterday as only 52 senators voted to end the debate.

Still with me?

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.

Study abroad programs are wildly popular among this generation of young people. A 2007 Open Doors report announced that there was an 8.5% increase of students studying abroad in the last three years.

A record 223,534 students from U.S. colleges spent anywhere from a January or summer term to more than a year earning academic credit in a foreign country. That was up 8.5 percentage points from the 2004-05 school year when 205,993 students went abroad and up 150 percent from the 1995-96 year when fewer than 90,000 students took classes over seas, the study said.

Its popularity isn't exactly a mystery.

The Institute for the International Education of Students (IES), www.iesabroad.com, surveyed alumni from all IES study abroad programs from 1950 to 1999. Regardless of where students studied and for how long, the data from the more than 3,400 respondents (a 23 percent response rate) shows that studying abroad is usually a defining moment in a young person's life and continues to impact the participant’s life for years after the experience.

Survey Item	% Full Year	% Fall Semester	% Spring Semester	% Summer	% Total
Personal Development
Increased self-confidence	98%	95%	96%	97%	96%
Served as a catalyst for increased maturity	98%	97%	97%	95%	97%
Has had a lasting impact on world view	97%	95%	94%	92%	95%
Academic Commitment
Enhanced interest in academic study	81%	80%	79%	84%	80%
Influenced subsequent educational experiences	91%	85%	86%	84%	87%
Reinforced commitment to foreign language study	88%	83%	85%	90%	86%
Intercultural Development
Helped me better understand my own cultural values and biases	99%	97%	97%	95%	98%
Influenced me to seek out a greater diversity of friends	94%	88%	89%	86%	90%
Continues to influence interactions with people from different cultures	97%	93%	92%	92%	94%
Career development
Acquired skill sets that influenced career path	82%	73%	74%	71%	76%
Ignited an interest in a career direction pursued after the experience	70%	57%	59%	59%	62%

So is it really any wonder that Millennials are disenchanted with the political process? This is a perfect example of why. A package of legislation with broad, bipartisan support is bogged down because one senator out of 100 is holding it up. One of those pieces of legislation, a chance to dramatically grow and improve a life-changing program that is beloved by the most multicultural generation ever, is being squashed because some lawmakers are not willing to cooperate, compromise, and get something done. Not only is this a significantly visible missed opportunity among Millennial college students, but it is also a rejection of this generation's pragmatic values.

Change may be coming, but there is still much work to be done.