Orlando Sentinel: Prioritize programs to send students abroad
Higher education has one role: to improve the lives of students. While some institutions are trumpeting on-campus benefits like lazy rivers, luxurious dorms and multi-million-dollar esports arenas, it is the experiences that have nothing to do with these headline-grabbing facilities that are most likely to transform students’ lives.
Horace Greeley, a 19th-century American newspaper editor, famously said during the westward expansion of the U.S., “Go west, young man,” advising young people to travel for self-improvement. For modern undergraduates, studying abroad has proven to be an effective way to get outside their comfort zones, improving their GPAs, increasing their likelihood of staying in college, and equipping them with the skills employers value. Students studying foreign languages are not the only ones who benefit from going abroad; the experience also leads to improvements in the time-to-graduation and grades of students in STEM majors.
Resort-style dorms and top-notch climbing walls may sway students to apply to universities, but they play a small role in increasing graduation rates and producing successful students. The benefits of studying abroad significantly outweigh the luxury accommodations that are increasingly common at institutions of higher education. Graduates decades later will not remember the amenities in the student union or the university bowling alley, but they will undoubtedly use the perspectives and skills they gained from their international experiences.