Top Trends 2009 #7: Globally-Engaged Education

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published December 26, 2008 @ 09:54AM PT

If you visit northern Uganda during the summer, you're likely to notice the surplus of young Americans running around Gulu town, seemingly all on official humanitarian business. If you listened in on their conversations, some would be talking about earned income strategies; some about microcredit; others about after school programs. And while their good intentions and passions are often much better developed than their skills and strategies for creating change, these young people constitute a potentially powerful force for good.

The last few years have seen an explosion of education entrepreneurship, which is reshaping the American education system at every level and increasing student interest in social entrepreneurship. If this was a list of the forces that would shape social entrepreneurship most profoundly in the long-run rather than just in 2009, "globally-engaged education" would be right on top.

There are a few factors driving the shift happening in education.

A move from read-only to read-write culture, in which young people participate in the creation of the world around them, is significant. The "Net Generation," as Don Tapscott calls us, are less interested in experiences where they are passive recipients of media, culture, or, more relevant to this blog, news of global tragedy. They're looking to be engaged and put to work.

At the same time, traditional educators are experiencing something of a "competitive terror," as the oft-repeated statistics about the number of PhD's China and India are producing compared to America's stagnant test scores are forcing a new creativeness and experimentation.

Finally, there is a feeling of something of a "generational imperative" among young people. It began earlier, but particularly in the wake of 9/11, the millennial generation feels a call to service that is putting significant pressure on educational institutions to create experiential programs that facilitate their development as global citizens.

On the K-12 level, the changes can be seen in the growth of the Charter School movement and the increase of in student service requirements and participation. It can also be seen however, in the new forms of support that groups like Ashoka's Youth Venture are offering to young people launching their own global change projects. Even with Ashoka's good work, we lag behind our transatlantic friends in the UK on this front. Their UnLtd Lottery Fund provides grants at a variety of levels to student projects starting from age 12 on.

At undergraduate institutions around the country, it is student innovation and student demand that is pushing universities to offer better programs for training engaged global citizens. Groups like GlobeMed, the Student Movement for Real Change, Manna Project, and Nourish International are student-founded nonprofits that harness students to support international development efforts. A few schools have received major endowments to support student international projects, and supporters like the Davis Projects for Peace scholarship, Clinton Global Initiative University, and Ashoka University are stepping up to foster student innovation. Our Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern may be the first full hybrid student-administration partnership. CGE started as a student-led conference, and has grown to become a university-embedded program design center sending hundreds of students a year abroad.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the ascendance of social entrepreneurship is the rise of social enterprise programs at business schools. All of the top MBA programs in the country now have some form of social enterprise curriculum; NetImpact, the leading MBAs-for-Good-student-group has seen a dramatic increase in its membership over the last ten years, and business plan competitions like the Global Social Venture Competition launch important new ventures like World of Good every year.

So what does this mean for 2009? While I think the biggest impact of this educational entrepreneurship is the long-term potential of a generation of better trained do-gooders, I think we'll see some specific things happen in the year to come:

1. If it's not already there, "social enterprise" education will become a "must have" vs. a "nice-to-have." Simultaneously, economic insecurity might mean that more MBAs take a few years to pursue their social enterprise instead of taking dwindling consulting and management jobs.
2. At least one top-twenty university will partner with a group like Ashoka University to launch a study abroad program focused on social entrepreneurship. And yes, the Center for Global Engagement is working to make this prediction a self-fulfilling prophecy.
3. Nonprofits will increasingly look at high school students as significant partners and stakeholders in their work, along the lines of Invisible Children's Schools for Schools program.