WASHINGTON — Claiming America has a "serious deficit in global competence," an independent task force on Tuesday urged the government to increase the number of U.S. college students who learn foreign languages and study abroad.
Researchers said Americans are disconnected from the rest of the world at a time when anti-American sentiments run high over the war in Iraq and the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
"Our country simply cannot afford to remain ignorant of the rest of the world. The stakes are simply too high," said former education secretary Richard Riley, honorary co-chairman of the Strategic Task Force on Education Abroad.
Sept. 11 was "a warning that America’s ignorance of the world is now a national liability," said the report, compiled for the Association of International Educators, a private organization that promotes international education and exchange. The "stubborn monolingualism and ignorance of the world" that persists in the United States only feeds the confusion many Americans felt after Sept. 11, it said.
The task force urged Congress to set aside $3.5 billion a year to fund fellowships that would allow a half-million students to receive grants of up to $7,000 annually to earn college credit overseas. The goal is to have funding to support 5 million students by 2010, said former Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, an honorary co-chairman.
Currently, about 130,000 of the nation’s full-time and part-time undergraduate students participate in university-sponsored study abroad programs each year, the report said.
By contrast, Simon said, 584,000 students from other countries studied at U.S. colleges and universities during the 2002-2003 academic year.
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