Get 'em off this rock!
CNN has an article entitled "Task force calls for more study abroad", which includes this gem:
"September 11 was "a warning that America's ignorance of the world is now a national liability," said the report, compiled for the Association of International Educators, a private organization that promotes international education and exchange. The "stubborn monolingualism and ignorance of the world" that persists in the United States only feeds the confusion many Americans felt after September 11, it said."We need to ask ourselves not only why they hate us, but why we did not know they hate us so much?" said Julia Chang Bloch, a former ambassador to Nepal."
The report, commissioned by an independent task force, calls for more subsidies for overseas studies. It's a great first step, but the problem really lies with the fact that more than 70% of the American population who have not completed a bachelor's degree. I would argue that lowering the barriers so that more people could go to college would do more than sending college grads to another country for a few months.
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Not having completed a bachelor's degree is very different from not having done any post-secondary education. I'd argue that especially if you count the community college system here, the barriers to post-secondary education are significantly lower than in most Western countries -- particularly considering how early many of those countries "track" their students into courses that lock them out of universities entirely.
The up-front cost here for university-level education is significantly higher, but anyone graduating from high school can go *somewhere*. That's not so in most other places.
Josh-
Your point is well made, but the odds of obtaining a well-paying job with prospects for growth are far lower with an associate's degree than with a bachelor's degree. My point was not to compare the accessibility of education in the USA to other countries, but to note that opening doors to universities for more people would do wonders for the extent to which Americans have a greater awareness of other cultures... as you help point out, despite the ease with which one can obtain post-secondary education, it clearly does not help very much with regard to America's awareness of how it is seen in a global context.