The Costs of Exploring the World by Studying Abroad by Christopher

The Costs of Exploring the World by Studying Abroad by Christopher - March 2016 Scholarship Essay

The beautiful, lively, and unique planet Earth is home to a plethora of wondrous sights and exotic cultures. Experiencing a hundred of these smaller spectacles and societies would amount to only a simplistic perspective of the richness our world has to offer. The up-and-coming generation of scientists, engineers, artists, and explorers who presently attend our universities have a wonderful opportunity available to them. Studying abroad allows students to soak up the richness of other cultures and languages.

In 2012, IES Abroad conducted a survey of over one thousand of their students and found a shocking result: students who studied abroad were more than twice as likely as regular college graduates to find work within a year of graduation! Numerous statistics listed by the University of California, Merced show that studying abroad helped the majority of students get into better schools, make more money, and refine valuable skills for the job market. It would seem clear that pursuing this academic opportunity would lead to a life-long experience one shall never forget.

Varsity Tutors asks if college students should be required for students to study abroad. Schools including the Carlson Global Institute have already voted and passed such a requirement. However, enacting a directive like this would conflict with the rights of students. When even a fragment of students cannot or do not wish to study abroad, a mandate for them to do so would be out of the question.

One major fundamental problem with this requirement would be accessibility. Traveling to other areas of the world brings an abundance of costs for room and board, food, clothing, supplies, and tuition. Frankly, many young adults of the working class cannot pursue these opportunities because of financial burden. The students would either be required to take out high interest loans or watch their dream to travel the world fade into the distance. An additional problem with requiring students to study abroad is that it may directly conflict with their employment schedule, religious or empirical beliefs, or personal desire. In a world where students are already working long hours to cover an insignificant portion of their educational expenses, we cannot enforce a system that obliges them to leave their current jobs without guarantee of reemployment. Lastly, some students may simply be uninterested in studying abroad for a number of reasons; a few of which would be the aforementioned costs, language barrier, and cultural gaps.

While experiencing a new place, culture, and language is extremely valuable, there are too many exceptions that would prevent studying abroad from being an educational requirement for students. Our youth deserves the opportunity to live in and experience other cultures without the burden of debt and financial hardship. The solution to this problem would be to make studying abroad an optional educational endeavor and strongly encourage students to explore the option. Making the adventure significantly more accessible by offering scholarships or free tuition would open the door to a greater population of students. The ones who take advantage of this opportunity will reap benefits for a lifetime, but studying abroad is not for everyone and should not be mandated.