U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, recently said:“95 percent of the people we want to sell something to live somewhere other than the United States.” For Midwest Entrepreneurs going global is not a choice, it’s the road to prosperity.
Victor C. Johnson said the following in yesterday’s edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education: “American competitiveness depends on success in a world of which most of us are remarkably ignorant, and on selling things to people whose languages we don’t speak.
The competitiveness conversation must shift from “STEM” to “STEM-internationalized”— or STEMi”– a phrase commonly used to encompass all of the international aspects of learning that are available to our students today: foreign languages, curricula with global content, study abroad, foreign students on campus, academic partnerships and research collaboration across borders, and more.
This is why we created the international business major at Monmouth College. It may seem out of place to have international business at a liberal arts college, but we believe it is exactly what business students should be learning about so I continue to preach the mantra to anyone that will listen. Johnson goes on to say “International education’s goal is–or, properly thought of, should be—to graduate “globally literate” students from our schools and colleges. Most political and opinion leaders can articulate that this is important, but it usually doesn’t make it into the competitiveness conversation. It’s as if international education were something different from competitiveness—something we might get to later once we get the important stuff done. But this is important stuff. It is simply not possible to imagine, in today’s world, a country succeeding in global competitiveness in the absence of a citizenry equipped with global knowledge.”
With the international business majors our goal is to graduate internationally –literate citizens and workers that can thrive working with colleagues from other cultures. Johnson concludes “our biggest national problems are global, and indeed knowledge is global—[all] education is international. It must be central to our competitiveness strategy to ensure that by 2020, all of our college students graduate with basic international knowledge, including knowledge of at least one foreign region, and with the ability to converse in a foreign language.”
Remember the prediction:95 percent of the people we will want to sell something to now live somewhere outside the United States. For Midwest Entrepreneurs going global is not a choice, it’s the road to prosperity.
