In the background of a small bedroom, a Google Home thumps on a desk. An eclectic blend of music ricochets lazily off the walls, hard rap flows bleeding into orchestral ballads into bouncy pop, no regard for taste, just music that engages the emotions. Dim lighting from colored string lights and a meager light bulb cast the room in a purple glow, and at the desk sits a young college student in a foldable chair. The cool, hard metal of the chair reminds him to look for another chair, something with more back support, but it falls on deaf ears as it always does. He looks up briefly from his laptop and then goes back to typing after whatever thought he had eluded him. On his screen, the logo of a college appears in the top left corner and the page reads: Experience Cross-Cultural. He browses options, mumbles some expletives as prices pop up, and lays back in the cold, metal chair, thinking about what to do.
EMU is one of only a few universities in the United States that requires its students to complete a cross-cultural experience. The requirement is a part of the university’s greater commitment to world-building and providing its students with a complete liberal arts education, which sees them taking classes from nearly every discipline as a part of the core curriculum. The cross-cultural requirement attempts to bridge the gap between learning from one’s home culture to learning from the perspectives of a different culture, to equip students with a more complete understanding of the world outside of themselves. This learning experience can be fulfilled through a variety of destinations, most outside of the United States and a select few within, as well as through a variety of durations, from three-week summer programs to whole semester trips.
Though the requirement intends to broaden the cultural understanding of students and prepare them for success through seeing the world and its issues beyond themselves, there are a handful of issues that are often overlooked in favor of the ideals of the cross-cultural experience. The biggest issue that comes with cross-culturals is their cost. In addition to paying the semester’s tuition, cross-culturals add on the cost of room and board and travel fees, which often land in the extra thousands of dollars. Though financial aid and scholarships are applied to the total cost as they would be in a typical semester, they are not extended to summer programs, which means that students have to pay for summer cross culturals out of pocket or through a loan. This contributes an immense amount of stress to students who may already be financially challenged in paying for college, as well as those who are concerned in general about having to pay for something they may not see the point in doing, or may not have the financial means for in general.
To counter this, EMU does have a local option that costs significantly less than other programs. Despite that, the program is much more difficult to qualify for, especially given how much EMU pushes its goals for cross-cultural learning and encourages taking a trip abroad. To attend a local trip, you must meet the qualifications, as you do any other trip. The issue that results from this is that the facade of having a choice in where you’ll go or what trip is best for you is often more in the hands of the university than it is in the students. It seems a bit ridiculous to require such an expensive experience and still make it difficult to find an experience that best suits a student’s financial situation. The university seems to care more about the potential experience and benefits of studying abroad than it does the immediate concerns of and impacts on the students.
Of course, being exposed to a different culture will yield opportunities and experiences that students may never get otherwise, at least not in such an in-depth manner. But is it worth the financial burden that it often leaves students strapped with, though, especially as something that cannot be opted out of? In addition to this, the stress of being thrust into a new culture for an extended period can be emotionally draining and distract from the central goal of many students in getting a degree that will benefit them in the immediate future; it requires students to step away and be distracted from that goal.
While I do see the immense importance of being culturally aware and understanding of the greater world around you, requiring cross-culturals to college-age students who are already challenged with paying for tuition at an expensive university is not financially feasible. On top of that, students are also dealing with the general challenges of college, growing up, and preparing to become an adult. At the very least, the requirement should be optional, especially for students who are not mentally, emotionally, or financially prepared to travel to a different part of the world and immerse themselves in a different culture when they haven’t even had the chance to fully understand and prepare themselves for the culture they will more than likely be living in and contributing to post-college.
Going to a different culture does nothing to prepare a student for the immediate life or challenges they will face in navigating their own world once they graduate college. EMU should be more focused on giving its students access to degree-applicable programs and opportunities outside of the school– such as internships, jobs, and collaboration with organizations in the surrounding area and elsewhere in the United States that give them the chance to learn more about and interact within their desired field and area of study. For example, instead of going on a cross-cultural, a VACA student could intern at a production company, or participate in workshops at legitimate film studios, similar to clinicals for nursing students. The goal should be equipping students with a focused and strong education to prepare themselves for their future careers and provide them with the tools and opportunities necessary to achieve and excel in those careers.
While cross-culturals are excellent opportunities and can be eye-opening for many students, more often than not, they serve as a distraction to how a student can be realistically successful and achieve their goals in the world and field they will likely be a part of. Cross-culturals in their current state and as a requirement are more idealistic than they are realistically and tangibly beneficial, especially for the burden they put on students in the middle of the most important years in securing a successful future. Optional cross-culturals would function much better as a tool for students, especially for those to work abroad or in a career that requires them to be knowledgeable of the greater world and capable of navigating and traveling it. As a requirement, though, there aren’t enough tangible benefits other than exposing the student to a different culture, which is great in its own right but not entirely worth thousands of dollars and a semester of college during which they could be securing opportunities within or preparing for their future field.
With the means that EMU clearly has within the community and as a well-respected university, they would be completely capable of providing students with unprecedented and greater opportunities to gain meaningful experience in their desired careers. They could do this through internships and connections to organizations that can provide meaningful life and career experiences and opportunities as an alternative to study-abroad programs. EMU is well-known for its educational prowess and the quality tools it gives students in every program, tools that you’d be hard-pressed to find in such a capacity and availability at other schools. They could take that same prowess, provision, and funding and apply it to job and career opportunity outreach for students as opposed to focusing so immensely on the idea of a cross-cultural experience. In doing so, students are given a better chance of being successful than when having them learn of and from a different culture.
You can still make students culturally aware and prepared for different elements of the surrounding world without requiring them to travel abroad. Investing in the careers and success of students is far more important than developing their cross-cultural awareness, at least at this time in their life. Many students will still travel as they grow older. They will be more prepared and equipped to deal with those travels once they are capable of understanding and dealing with their own world first and once they have reached a level of success and financial comfortability to allow those travels to happen more organically and thus more meaningfully.
