Fostering Engagement: The Role of International Education in the Development of Global Civil Society

This essay is an effort to describe the foundational problems in international education and study abroad that constrain our efforts, as well as an attempt to sketch out what we need to do to foster engagement with the monumental problems that humanity faces. In addition, the essay also endeavours to suggest that international educators embed their work in a broad and compelling discourse that might provide a vision that is not exclusively focused on the state and/or the market, but is instead global and human centric in its orientation. It should be a requirement at higher education institutions that all students engage in a significant period of study abroad in order to help them see the globe as the context, and fundamental referent, for their lives. This should be the primary task of study abroad programs.