The Huffington Post – Taylor Dibbert
“I recently read an excellent essay by Sanford J. Ungar. Published in Foreign Affairs, the piece explains why it’s so important for Americans to study abroad. “The trouble is that relatively few Americans currently enjoy this kind of life-changing overseas experience,” writes Ungar. He cites many reasons for this, including inflexible curriculum requirements at American institutions of higher learning and the extra costs that could come with such an endeavor. Another significant problem is “the lack of curricular and socioeconomic diversity among those who do go overseas.” (The majority of students who study abroad are white and come from elite backgrounds.) Ungar notes that there have been some steps in the right direction. However, “efforts to increase the number of Americans studying abroad have been piecemeal and only partially successful.”.”(more)