The Room that Mr. Aalto Built:
A Brief History of Why America Needs the World

Remarks at the 2006 Finnish National Conference
University of Lappeenranta, Finland
May 2006

By Dr. Allan E. Goodman
President and CEO, Institute of International Education

The world-famous Aalto Room that crowns the Institute of International Education building in New York City connects me in a special way to this countryside and conference.  The southern wall, which rises to a full two-story height in a wave from west to east, meets the river vista in a forest-like sculpture of bent birch wood.  It is a daily reminder that there is a world beyond America because it is also a room with a view. 

It looks out on the grounds of the United Nations and the territory beyond the East River.  This is the famed borough of Queens, which is today in Walt Whitman's words "a teeming nation of nations" thanks to immigration.  Some 200 languages are actually spoken at the UN.  There are more mosques and churches in Queens than in some countries.  So no matter where you look, from my vantage point I am reminded that countries as well as companies today need people whose minds are open to the world. 

Higher education has been one of the most direct ways to accomplish that.  It does so by providing a foundation -- and in some cases an actual experience -- on which a person can acquire mutual understanding and practice intercultural diplomacy.  Unfortunately, "international" is not usually a part of education and those of us involved in the field tend to forget just how few persons have the opportunity.

There are now over 200 sovereign states; in only 20 of them does the proportion of international students enrolled in higher education exceed 1 percent.  And while the U.S. is the leading destination for students from other countries (with over 565,000 enrolled in the 2004-2005 academic year) and accounts for about 25 percent of the total population of students seeking tertiary education and advanced degrees abroad, internationals represent less than 4 percent of total U. S. enrollments.  While the percentage for Finland is smaller than that, your country is one of a handful that has a national policy aimed at doubling the number of international students by 2010. You also have a national goal that a minimum of one out of every three university students should study abroad.

With less than 1 percent of Americans studying abroad each year (in a country where less than 30 percent of its citizens will get a passport during their working lives), it is a goal I admire.

I have subtitled my lecture "A Brief History" because America's global engagement has neither been long nor based on necessity.  Education, ironically, has much to do with our history of insularity.

Thomas Jefferson – who was so enlightened in so many areas – founded the University of Virginia so that young Americans could avoid altogether the influence of foreign travel.  Jefferson feared that study abroad would re-kindle an interest in monarchy and promote a fondness for wine.  The legendary president of Harvard, Charles W. Elliot, believed – as did many of his time – that "in a strong nation, the education of the young is indigenous and national.  It is a sign of immaturity or decrepitude when a nation has to import its teachers, or send its scholars abroad."  American attitudes toward study abroad did not really begin to change until the establishment of the Fulbright Program in the aftermath of World War Two.  The Institute was asked to implement that program for the U.S. Government at the time and it has been our privilege to be doing so ever since on behalf of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State.

Immigration – which has given us many gifts – has also been an area about which Americans have been ambivalent.  After two decades of substantial immigration at the start of the 20th century, the U.S. limited its intake in 1921 to 3 percent for each nationality based on the number of foreign-born persons of that nationality in the 1910 census.  In 1924, the quota was lowered to 2 percent based on the 1890 census and that law remained in force until 1965.  Today, a new legal immigrant arrives every 30 seconds.  In this very global and inter-connected world, it is hard to imagine that until 1980, the proportion of the U.S. GNP generated by trade was under 10 percent.  It took another 15 years for that proportion to reach 20 percent.  Today, foreign trade still accounts for less than 30 percent of the GNP.

International students are also a significant – but underappreciated – contributor to our economy.  Most Americans do not realize that two-thirds of these students pay their own way and last year contributed more than $13 billion directly to the economy in tuition and other purchases on the local economy.  According to the Department of Commerce, international education is now the nation's fifth largest export of services and exceeds the value of U.S. exports of medical equipment.  In New York City last year, international students paid more than $876 million for goods and services, a figure larger than the combined revenue of the Yankees, Mets, and Knicks.

While foreign-born graduates are just 3 percent of the U.S. population, more than a third of all of America's Nobel Prize winners were born in other countries.  Forty percent of all who earn Ph.D.s in science and 60 percent in engineering began their lives and careers elsewhere.  U.S. citizens are a minority of the research staff at the National Institutes of Health.  Twenty-five percent of all practicing physicians in America were educated in other countries and over 20,000 international medical graduates have entered residency programs since 2000.  For us these days, it is hard to imagine a visit to a hospital without foreign professionals, or what our society would be like without the discoveries that those who came here from other countries were able to make.  Since three-quarters of all jobs in America are now based in services, many of or citizens are just beginning to understand how hard it might be to get enough surgeons and nurses, scientists and engineers, barbers and beauticians, construction site laborers and janitors, or major league baseball players – occupations that cannot be performed remotely, over the internet, or through overseas call centers – if we were unable to attract workers from abroad. 

The fact that we are increasingly dependent on human resources from abroad has still not changed how we think about things at home.

While most American scholars agree that the world is flat (again), none have a prescription for how this fact should change what we teach.  In fact, the prevailing view in my field is that the more things change, the more this demonstrates that we still only have two choices: to be realists or idealists.  And while there is growing recognition of the importance of study abroad, we still create so little space in the curriculum that most of our students cannot do so for longer than a few weeks.  Those of us in university administration, moreover, often need to go to extraordinary lengths to encourage faculty themselves to go abroad and assure that when they are awarded such prestigious fellowships as the Fulbright the time off campus does not adversely affect their prospects for tenure. 

The events of  9/11 and the other acts of terrorism which followed in Indonesia, India, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, Russia, Turkey, Spain, and England have also made the international mobility of students and scholars more difficult in many places.  There has also been a decade-long decline in Finnish-American student exchanges, and I would welcome in the discussion at this conference your advice and help in sustaining and expanding academic exchange flows so  that future generation on both sides of the Atlantic will be assured of a better understanding of each other’s culture and politics.  But I am glad to be able to note that more international students are now in America – and some of the other countries I mentioned – today than before 9/11.  Indications so far from U.S. embassies in the 10 top sending countries are that student visa applications this spring are up over previous years, that approval rates are now higher than before 9/11 with approximately 75 percent of all applications being approved, and that all but 2 percent processed within 2 days.  To my knowledge, the U.S. is the only country in the post-9/11 world whose president, foreign minister, and interior minister have all and repeatedly spoken out about the need to keep our doors open.

It is equally important to continue to work at opening our minds, too.

I return, then, to the room with a view.  There as here, the sun is about the first thing you notice in the morning.  As the Nobel Laureate Sillanpaa wrote in The Maid Silja:

"The sun had risen sometime after three and climbed gradually to overlook hundreds and thousands of yards and windows, pats and porches, and even to peer into rooms where human beings slept in their beds.   It looked also into birds' nests, in which to be sure there was no atmosphere of Sunday, for in them every morning, especially the sunny one, is equally holy."

The observation is particularly apt for your jet-lagged speaker today.  The light we see in New York began where you saw it first and should remind us that we all share – and are responsible for protecting – the gifts that it brings.