Hans de Wit is director of foreign relations at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and is the 1994 president of the European Association for International Education. He is currently a visiting scholar at Boston College.
Internationalism is a central focus of higher education policy worldwide.
Nations recognize that they operate in a global economy, and that understanding other societies and cultures is both valuable in its own right and necessary to be competitive. Our argument here is that internationalism is mandatory for any higher education system in the 21st century. What is amazing to us is that while the rest of the world's universities are becoming more international, the United States shows signs of de-emphasizing internationalism in its higher education system. The Fulbright program, America's flagship international education effort, faces severe budget cuts in Washington. The National Security Education Program, established in 1991 as the first major federal initiative in international education in several decades, is threatened with extinction even before it is fully underway.