The world has become very interconnected. This is no surprise, the evidence is all around us and continues to increase. What this actually means though is more complex than it appears.
One area this impacts greatly is the workplace. More and more people are working internationally. This continues to largely be either through large multinationals or cheap labor that is imported to do largely unskilled or minimally skilled labor.
There is also a continuing increase in skilled and educated labor working overseas for other than huge multi-nationals. The infrastructure to support this is often not in place. The current structure (visas etc.) support the two modes mentioned above.
But I see an increasing number of opportunities for countries that encourage entrepreneurship and high skill jobs. I relocated to Malaysia and in doing so did a bit of research. It is difficult to get a long term visa in most countries without a full time job (and given the complexity of hiring foreign workers this often means dealing with companies that do a lot of it – in the 2 categories mentioned above).
Career prospects are enhanced with international experience. One way to get a jump start on your career is international education. This has been popular for a long time but is becoming more and more popular. Students studying in London can get the benefits of international experience (unless they are from England, obviously) and enjoy the great city of London and accessible travel to Europe.
The importance is to truly gain an international perspective. Those in the USA have the greatest problem as knowledge workers in most other countries are much more aware of the global economy. Europe is an easy way to get started and is packed with lot of great schools and processes in place to make it easy to become a student.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I believe the most important factor for a career is finding something you love to do, but within those possibilities it is nice to know the payoff of different college degrees.
Those that see Asia as the economic engine for the next 50 years might well be tempted to look at attending school there. There are plenty of options though it may take a bit more work on your part to make it happen. I think attending at least some portion of college internationally is a great idea as is getting international work experience early in your career.
Related: How to Balance the Benefits of Foreign Workers and the Potential Damage to Citizen’s Job Prospects – Leading Economic Freedom: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland
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During business school I visited China and evaluated the possibility of working there for a few years. I found there was much less demand for expat workers these days as more and more Chinese people travel abroad for education and return to work in China.
It will be interesting to see as China continues to grow in economic might, how the balance shifts, and if and when US students will start traveling to China for education. Somehow I doubt they will be returning to the US to work afterwards at the rate things are going.
So if the costs of college for them are just as high as those in the top tenth percentile it is reasonable to expect they may take longer to pay it back or fail to do so.
I believe this is more a thought experiment than something to definitively measure…