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If the World is Flat, What are We Still Doing in Cambridge?

Allan Goodman: April 4, 2008; Running Time: 0:59:05

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

At the very moment when “we have to confront the opportunity or challenge of globalization,” says Allan Goodman, higher education appears woefully unprepared. The world is not ‘flat’ for the vast majority of college students.

Only 30 of 192 U.N. member states boast enrollments of international students at levels that exceed 1%. In the U.S., it is a little over 3%. Of the 2.7 million international students, 600 thousand come to the U.S. -- most hoping to end up at Harvard, according to Goodman. They are distributed among just 150 schools, usually in very small numbers. This is bad news, because “never has there been a more difficult time for us in the world,” says Goodman, and education exchange broadens not just the “knowledge enterprise” but enhances the image of both host and origin country.

Goodman worries about a shortfall in capacity, as developing countries graduate students from secondary schools with no, few or bad choices for college. The U.S. has 4000 accredited higher education institutions, 1/3rd of all such institutions in the world, and employs 2/3rds of the world’s faculty. Cairo University has 250 thousand students, many of whom have never seen a professor or entered a classroom. By the end of this decade, one university in Nanjing will have a million students, but won’t have enough space to educate them. It’s no wonder there’s increasing pressure to come to the U.S. for an education. Who is going to teach the 200 million or so people who will be trying to attend universities by 2025, wonders Goodman. That will be the “single biggest challenge for educators everywhere, whether you’re in Cambridge, Chile or China.”

MIT and other world-class universities should develop their own multilateral foreign policy, says Goodman, enabling students to enter from all over the world, and for U.S. students to study elsewhere. 75% of Americans currently don’t have passports; foreign language study, from elementary school through college, is no longer required. This must change, says Goodman. U.S. students and older scholars who travel to other parts of the world “can be genuine voices of our society and culture,” perhaps staying to “build a bridge in China” or cars in Germany. They might even help develop educational resources in another country, serving the rising tide of students overseas. It’s time to change the paradigm, says Goodman: “I think we should aspire to say, to be educated in America means you need to have international (study) as part of your education.”

Lecture Details

Location: Broad Institute

“I think we should aspire to say, to be educated in America means you need to have international (study) as part of your education.”

Allan Goodman

About the Speaker

Allan Goodman

President and CEO, Institute of International Education

Allan Goodman is the sixth President of IIE, the leading not-for-profit organization in the field of international educational exchange and development training. IIE administers the Fulbright program, sponsored by the United States Department of State, and 200 other corporate, government and privately-sponsored programs.

Previously, he was Executive Dean of the School of Foreign Service and Professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of books on international affairs published by Harvard, Princeton and Yale University Presses and Diversity in Governance, published by the American Council on Education. Goodman is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has been awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from The State University of New York to recognize his work in rescuing threatened scholars. Goodman was awarded the title “Chevalier” of the French Legion of Honour in April 2007.

Goodman has a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard, an M.P.A. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and a B.S. from Northwestern University.

Allan Goodman

Goodman's IIE profile

About the Host

About the Host

Department of Urban Studies and Planning

The Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) is a department within the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. It is comprised of four specialization areas (also referred to as Program Groups): City Design and Development; Environmental Policy and Planning; Housing, Community and Economic Development; and the International Development Group. There are also three cross-cutting areas of study: Transportation Planning and Policy, Urban Information Systems (UIS), and Regional Planning.