The past three days I was at the IIE Generation Study Abroad Summit 2016 in Washington, DC and it was excellent! I strongly encourage you and your colleagues to consider attending the 2017 Summit and if your institution or organization hasn't already done so please consider joining the 700+ Commitment Partners from across the globe who have joined the Generation Study Abroad initiative to double the number of U.S. students studying abroad.
There were too many great sessions at the Summit to choose from but the ones I attended were informative, engaging and thought provoking and I plan to post some thoughts I left with from the Summit. One idea I found to be very interesting came from Sanford J. Ungar during the closing plenary. Sanford Ungar is a leading proponent of study abroad and during his tenure as President of Goucher College he set forth a policy in 2006 requiring all undergraduate students at the school to study abroad before they graduated. He also wrote a great essay in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled 'The Study-Abroad Solution: How to Open the American Mind' in March/April of this year and I encourage you to check it out.
During the closing plenary of the Generation Study Abroad Summit yesterday, Mr. Ungar suggested that there should be student loan forgiveness for students who study abroad! While there are many variables that need to be sorted out should such a policy take hold but I fully support this idea. Student loan forgiveness for students who study abroad would have broad reaching implications and this idea is certainly worth further exploration.
What are you thoughts on student loan forgiveness for students who study abroad?
Leave a comment below with your thoughts or, better yet, if you are on Twitter please tweet your thoughts using the following hashtags: #GenerationStudyAbroad & #IIESummit2016
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