New Directions in Study Abroad: Opportunities for Students in the Professional Schools
AN INTERESTING trend in higher education in recent years has been the growth of programs for study abroad. Thus far, this movement has given impetus chiefly to the establishment of undergraduate programs in the liberal arts or to the "junior year abroad." With due recognition of the importance of the junior-year movement, it might be well to consider whether sufficient attention has been paid to the needs of students in the nation's professional schools. Students majoring in the humanities and social sciences make up the overwhelming majority of participants in college overseas programs at present. For example, some of the biggest professional schools at the University of California have had no students participating in the Education Abroad program of the university. For most students in such professional fields as architecture, business administration, or engineering-graduates and undergraduates alike-foreign study is an attractive but remote possibility. In some of the larger American universities, students in the professional schools comprise perhaps 30 per cent of the college population. In view of the leadership the professions exert in modern society and the increasing political and economic participation of the United States in world affairs, it can be argued that the need to establish opportunities for students in the professions to study abroad is as great as in other departments of the university, if not greater. Most of the problems we face today, whether they are related to the challenges posed by overpopulation, disease, Communism, or even the renewal of American cities, will depend in large part for their solution upon comparative studies and co-operation in many fields on a world scale. The faculties of the leading professional schools realize that their students should spend some time studying or interning abroad, and many schools have taken steps to enable them to do so. Most of their programs, however, are conducted on an ad hoc basis, and the number of students participating in them is extremely limited-probably less than half of one per cent of the schools' student bodv. Although the various professional schools encompass diverse dis-