By ZACHARY OLSAVICKY
Opinion Editor
“Kid, the next time I say, ‘let’s go someplace like Bolivia,’ let’s GO someplace like Bolivia.”
That line comes from the iconic 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. On the run from a posse of all-star bounty hunters, the titular Cassidy (played by Paul Newman) suggests Bolivia to the titular Sundance (Robert Redford) as a safe haven from the law and a chance to start anew as robbers. Of course, the move doesn’t go well—Bolivia is small potatoes for a pair of Old West robbers, and the duo eventually dies at the hands of the Bolivian army.
I couldn’t help but think of this classic film as I read the New York Times last week. The paper featured an article by Nick Kristof, the Gray Lady’s intrepid op-ed writer, in which he encouraged students to study abroad, with Bolivia receiving props.
Why study Spanish at a U.S. college, asks Kristof, when it is “cheaper and more exhilarating” to move to Bolivia? His recommended tactic: “…study or get a job and fall in love with a Bolivian.”
Well, he’s romantic, I’ll give him that. But the notion of moving to Bolivia to find that love is laughable: data from the World Bank shows a country with a lower primary school enrollment rate, lower life expectancy, and a per capita national income over $50,000 lower than the U.S. average.
You get a lot more for your money in Bolivia, but what could they have there that you could possibly want to buy?
To be fair to Kristof, he isn’t advocating a move to Bolivia per se. He makes it as part of a larger argument that studying abroad will help to “broaden perspectives,” one of the central goals of higher education. Kristof, who is a powerful reporter and advocate on human rights abuses and global poverty, credits travel with “opening (his) eyes to human needs and to human universals.” Among his travels were trips to India and Sudan, where he “slept on the floor (sic) of Indian temples and rode on the tops of Sudanese trains.”
Kristof’s experiences can be eye opening, but he should be looking at them through the eyes of the people who live there, not through the eyes of an American. Sleeping on floors and riding on train tops should remind Americans of how grateful we should be to live in the United States. People who live in India and Sudan don’t do these things because they want to broaden their perspectives—they do it because they have no other choice. It explains why so many people emigrate to the United States: this is still the land of opportunity, unparalleled by any other nation.
And it’s not just people immigrating to the U.S. to live: students emigrate to the U.S. for studies. As Kristof points out, three times as many international students come to the U.S. as the number of Americans go abroad. Other countries desperately need well-educated workers, but lack the higher education infrastructure to do so; as a result, higher education is outsourced to the United States. It’s a win-win scenario—countries receive educated workers, and American universities receive billions of dollars’ worth of tuition.
Despite the obvious signals that living and studying in the U.S. is better than anywhere else in the world, the number of American students who’ve elected to study abroad has, as pointed out by Kristof, tripled in the past twenty years. Are students wising up to human needs and universals, like Kristof hopes? The answer, sadly, is no—student are simply turning a college semester into an extended vacation.
For evidence, you don’t have to go any further than Saint Rose’s own study abroad department. Their Pinterest page is loaded with beautiful pictures and well-made graphic images—but no talk about what people can do to make the world a better place. The Facebook page for Saint Rose Abroad includes profiles of students who are studying internationally. What do they talk about? Sightseeing, shopping, the “extraordinary nightlife,” and even a bit about classes—but don’t worry, the workload “is very light and right to the point,” says one student.
Small price to pay for beauty.
That isn’t to say Saint Rose’s study abroad department—or any other college’s study abroad department, for that matter—is obligated to share Kristof’s ideals. But it highlights the discrepancy between Kristof’s ideal, which is the admirable notion of service work, and the reality, which is that study abroad is simply a marketing tool for colleges.
Of course, it isn’t just college study abroad programs that fail to match Kristof’s ideals. He points to Utah as one of the most “cosmopolitan” states in America, largely because the state’s populations of Mormons go on missionary trips around the world. Even in that case, intentions aren’t pure—the missionary trips are about proselytizing, a sort of reverse cultural assimilation that only serves to strengthen a religion’s power.
The realities of much institution-based international travel is that it supports an institution’s gains. This isn’t to cast moral aspersions—it’s simply to point out that there has to be a viable benefit for schools and the like to promote it, and providing people with opportunities for vacationing is more viable than providing them opportunities to do hard work.
But what of people who want to do good around the world? Kristof mentions the website idealist.org, which offers volunteer opportunities around the world. A quick check found a lot of U.S.-based positions, but even the U.S. could use the help. Some 50 million Americans live in poverty, and all sorts of social and political advances—raising the minimum wage, jobs programs, stronger anti-discrimination laws—could help greatly.
What young people need is not the chance to go on a vacation—they need to learn to take action against injustice and massive inequality around the world. Kristof argues that staying in a different country will help people understand the “complex prism of suspicion” through which the United States is viewed, but this isn’t productive. There is no monolith of good ideas beyond our borders, only the same levels of good and bad ideas we currently have.
How does it help me to look at America through a complex, flawed prism? I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.
