Oregon’s future economy needs to sell more goods and services abroad. More Oregon high school students need to spend a high school year studying abroad, learning the languages and cultures of those potential markets. Without spending any additional public moneys many more public high school students could study abroad. Just encourage local school districts to pay the fees of existing study abroad organizations on behalf of their students. Pilot programs are needed to show the way.

(1) Specifics: Meyer Memorial Trust should provide $160,000 each in matching funds to three local school districts willing to pilot high school study abroad programs to China for a total of $480,000. Match would be 50%/50%. Each school district would budget $50,000 for the overhead of developing and administering such a program for three year. Plus $90,000 each year for three years for 10 scholarship grants each year for high school study abroad in China. Total to each local school district would be $320,000. The MMT share would be $160,000 for each districts, times three equals $480,000.

(2) General Go Global High School Study Abroad concepts: There are existing academic-year-long study abroad programs that cost less than the per pupil spending in many Oregon school districts. For examples, using data from the Oregon Department of Education’s Open Book website for a recent year, Portland’s per pupil spending was $9,442, Salem-Keizer’s was $8,288, Beaverton’s was $7,607 , Hillsboro’s was $7,499 , and Eugene’s was $8,440. Portland based Education, Travel and Culture offers academic year abroad programs with fees ranging from to $5,500 to $7,950, not including airfare, from countries ranging from Brazil to Sweden. China is $6,950 (plus airfare) for an academic year. Portland based Andeo offers an academic year in Mexico for $6,000 plus airfare.

ASSE (American Scandinavian Student Exchange) provides the following academic-year study abroad programs: Mexico, $4,900; French Canada, $5,400; Finland, $7,550; Romania, $7,550; Germany, $7,550; Serbia, $7,550; Taiwan, $6,750; Holland, $7,550; Slovakia, $7,550; Hong Kong, $7,500; Italy, $7,550; Spain, $7,550; Mongolia, $7,500; Lithuania, $7,550; Sweden, $7,550; Vietnam, $7,500; Norway, $7,550; Switzerland, $7,550; Czech Republic, $7,550; Poland, $7,550; Turkey, $7,550; Denmark, $7,550; Portugal, $7,550; Ukraine, $7,550; Estonia, $7,550; and France, $8,650. Plus ASSE offers a 10 percent discount on all these programs for early payment.

AFS high school study abroad academic year offerings as of 2/13/09: Chile, $8,900; Costa Rica, $8,900; Czech Republic, $8,900; Dominican Republic, $8,900; Ecuador, $8,900; Egypt, $8,900; Honduras, $8,900; Hungary, $8,900; Latvia, $8,900; Turkey, $8,900; Panama, $8,900; Peru, $8,900; Paraguay, $8,900; Argentina, $9,900; Austria, $9,900; Belgium Flanders, $9,900; Brazil, $9,900; China, $9,900; Denmark, $9,900; Finland, $9,900; Germany, $9,900; Iceland, $9,900; India, $9,900; Indonesia, $9,900; Malaysia, $9,900; Netherlands, $9,900; Portugal, $9,900; Russia, $9,900; South Africa, $9,900; Sweden, $9,900; Thailand, $9,900; Belgium French, $10,900; France, $10,900; Ghana, $10,900; Italy, $10,900; New Zealand, $10,900; and Spain, $10,900.

There are many other study abroad programs currently existing and others could be created specifically to use this funding. So for little or no additional costs, Oregon could have many more high school students studying abroad. Some school district could save money by sending students to study abroad.

(3) No local school district or state in the US currently uses public funds to pay for its students to study abroad.

Oregon may or may not need to change its laws to permit local school districts to use state funds for study abroad. Pilot programs would help clarify this issue. HB 2719 in the 2009 session would have clarified the issue. It did not pass but will be reintroduced in 2011.

Graduation requirements need to be waived for students who study abroad to make this proposal public revenue neutral.

(4) The world’s economic and geo-political arrangements are undergoing rapid and sustained change.
Consider that improved transportation and communications together with the resulting global flow of financial investment funds are bringing distance economies into competition with each other, making the globe seem smaller and more interconnected; and
Consider that the global banking firm Goldman Sachs estimated that by 2050 the combined emerging economies of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) could exceed the combined economies of the current richest countries of the world; and
Consider that during the next thirty years, two to three billion people (out of a global population of 6.4 billion and growing) may join the global middle class, bringing substantial new buying power into the global market; and
Consider that in the next few decades roughly 80% of the world's economic growth will be found in emerging markets; and
Consider that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace estimated (2008) that the economy of China will equal in size the US economy in 2035 and be twice as large in 2050.
This is the global economy that today’s students, our next generations, will have to compete in. To be successful they will need the skills and knowledge to innovate, design, produce, buy and sell in these emerging markets around the globe. For our next generations to survive and thrive in this future global economy, more of them will need foreign language skills, and at proficiency levels higher than we now usually produce. Our Portland economy will thrive to the extent that we can create new services and products and sell them in these growing global markets.
For a student, nothing sparks the generation of new ideas like living in another culture and seeing the world and all its arrangements from a fresh perspective. We need to strengthen this capacity for innovation and the sense of adventure in our young. We need to send many more of our high school students to study abroad.
While we need generally to invigorate the study of foreign languages and send high school students to study all over the globe, China, and its official language Mandarin, deserve top priority in our efforts. China is the biggest emerging market, and, for that economic reason alone, deserves special priority. But China is much, much more. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Institute for International Economics put it:
No relationship matters more – for better of for worse – in resolving the enduring challenges of our time: maintaining stability among great powers, sustaining global economic growth, stemming dangerous weapons proliferation, countering terrorism, and confronting new transnational threats of infectious disease, environmental degradation, international crime, and failing states.

But even that sweeping statement does not capture China’s critical importance. China may become by the end of the 21st century the globe’s dominant superpower. It could become more powerful than the US. Our next generations may need to find a way to live peacefully with that reality or to take them on militarily. Currently, China spends about $70 billion on its military compared to $713 billion for the US, or just 10% of what the US spends, and China has roughly two dozen nuclear armed missiles. As a deterrent, their nuclear missiles are probably targeted at US cities. Probably, one of those nuclear missiles is usually targeted at Portland. This is not new, and should not raise any sudden alarms. Nuclear deterrence around the globe has proven to be quite stable. But consider further, as China’s economy grows this century to be more than twice the size of the US economy, and as its investments in education and research produce a very competitive high tech economy, they will have the capacity to considerably upgrade their military. What then?
How should the US, and Oregon, respond to this rise in China’s power? Consider the perspective of University of California Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong:
Think of it this way: Consider a world that contains one country that is a true superpower. It is preeminent--economically, technologically, politically, culturally, and militarily. But it lies at the east edge of a vast ocean. And across the ocean is another country--a country with more resources in the long-run, a country that looks likely to in the end supplant the current superpower. What should the superpower's long-run national security strategy be?
I think the answer is clear: if possible, the current superpower should embrace its possible successor. It should bind it as closely as possible with ties of blood, commerce, and culture--so that should the emerging superpower come to its full strength, it will to as great an extent possible share the world view of and regard itself as part of the same civilization as its predecessor: Romans to their Greeks.
Consider our own historical experience, the US rose to global power as the British Empire declined. The British mentored our rise to global power, and thus extended their influence on the global system fro generations. We did, after all, come to their aid in two world wars. But in this past Anglo-American case both countries shared a common language, English, and much of the US political and economic culture came from the British. Not so today between the US and China. We have very different languages and cultures. Yet, this is the big challenge for our next generations. They simply are not now prepared. Today, many Chinese students study English. Only around one percent of Oregon’s public school students are now studying Mandarin, and only very, very few to fluency. We must increase that. We should, as I put it, “Give Peace a Chance” by increasing the numbers of our next generations fluent in Mandarin and knowledgeable of China from time spent there.