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ROBERT D. HORMATS: Getting the best and the brightest from
around the world to participate in the American
system of education, American institutions of higher
learning, is important not only to your institutions,
obviously it is to get the very best and brightest from
around the world, but to our country.
More and more as I go around the world, I am quite
convinced that one of the things we have to export is
our educational system, but also the way we relate to one
another, the civil society that we have in this country,
the values we have in this country, the principles, the
kind of multiracial, multiethnic
society in this country.
These are the kind of things that when people come over
here, they understand, they participate in.
And the value as I go around the world and negotiate with
other countries, develop friendships in other
countries, people who've studied here understand us a
lot better than those who don't.
They understand how our country works, how a thriving
democracy works, how a market economy works, how a
multicultural, multiethnic society works.
It is wonderful.
Not that other countries don't have some of these attributes.
But we have a very unique kind of system in many ways.
And when you come here, you develop an
understanding of this.
You develop friends as you go through
college or graduate school.
That helps you to understand this in ways that simply
coming and visiting or vacationing
here really does not.
If you look at the achievements of our economy
over the last several hundred years, a lot of those
achievements have been by people who've come to the
United States, immigrated to the United States, or come to
the United States to do research in their later years,
or come to the United States to be part of
our educational system--
the best and the brightest from around the world.
People who go back to their countries,
contribute to their countries.
People who stay in the United States and work here
contribute to our economy.
And my personal view, and there are lots of points of
view here, my personal view is we should go out of our way to
ensure that those people who come to this country,
participate in the educational system in this country, and
want to stay have the opportunity to do that.
People who come here from other parts of the world help
to build their own economic competitiveness.
They work on research.
They are innovative.
They are part of what is a
dramatically innovative society.
If you look at where are the contributions, Sergey Brin
from Russia for instance, Andy Grove, who helped found Intel,
people like that from around the world.
Einstein came here.
Where would our physics establishment be and our
economics profession be without people who came from
around the world and went to various universities here and
participated in the university system?
There's a very funny story about Albert
Einstein told by his wife.
And various schools were trying to recruit Albert
Einstein, as you can almost imagine.
And various schools said oh, we'll give you a
big lab and all this.
So the recruiter from Princeton came.
And the recruiter says how big a lab would Dr. Einstein need
in order to come to Princeton?
She said, you don't understand.
Just give him a yellow pad and a chair to sit
in and he'll come.
That's all he needed.
He didn't have a lab.
He just figured these things out in his mind.
So the recruitment process obviously is one that engages
a lot of people in very different ways.
But what you're doing is really extremely important to
our country and I think to the world.
I taught a couple times at Princeton.
And I keep track of the students, many of
them over the years.
Many of them going on to various things.
Many of them have come from abroad and have gone back to
their countries.
They develop networks, particularly through their
Blackberry and all the emails and things that they do on a
regular basis.
They develop these kinds of network relationships.
Very different from students 20 or 30 years ago.
I was very lucky to have when I went to Tufts and then when
I went to Fletcher, a lot of students from abroad.
And it was very hard to keep up because we didn't have in
those days emails or Blackberries or any of these
other things.
But I managed to do it.
And some of the enduring friendships that I have today
are people who-- one guy lives in Mauritius,
another lives in Zimbabwe.
People at Fletcher, which had at least 50% of the people
came from other countries.
Many of them went into the diplomatic
corps of those countries.
So I've stayed in touch with them.
But these kinds of shared experiences and communities of
fellowship and friendship that kids make when they come here
with Americans, really are a very, very enduring element of
our system.
Education has become the fifth largest service export of the
United States.
Last academic year, nearly 700,000 international students
studied in the United States, contributing over $17 billion
to the American economy.
So this is an important part of our economy too.
And for many of your universities this is an
important opportunity to get great students and also to
fill up your universities with people who are going to be
major contributors in the future to your schools.
Because many of these people go on.
And they're best and brightest from their societies.
They go back and they do very well.
So it's an enormous plus.
Our challenge at the State Department is to help you to
market the over 4,000 higher education institutions in this
country to the multitude of applicants each
year around the world.
The State Department has the capability through the
services of EducationUSA, which you've heard about, to
be very helpful to universities, to help
foreigners to understand how to apply to American
universities, help them understand about the American
university system.
And the budget is not enormous.
But the people who work on this are really eager to be
helpful to you and have done I think a fabulous
job in doing this.
Ninety five percent of the world's consumers
live outside the world.
The fastest growing economies around the world are the
emerging economies.
Many of their students want to study in the United States.
Many of them want to be part of our educational system.
So in many cases the future of our economy depends on
openness to foreign students and foreign researchers and
people want to come and establish companies.
In many cases, the same is true with the future of your
universities.
There's certainly a great many Americans who want to go to
your universities and colleges.
But basically, there's also a future in recruiting as many
of the high quality people as you can from around the world.
And I'll just give you a little story that I heard.
This was several years ago, when I was the private sector.
And there was a meeting of the IMF in Singapore.
And we had a dinner for Lee Kwan Yew.
And I asked Lee Kwan Yew, who's one of brightest, wisest
men in the world.
A man with enormous depth and thinks these issues through.
And I said--
there were lots of articles at the time, is the United States
in decline?
Is the United States not in decline?
He said, I'll know when the United States is in decline
when you shut the doors to the best and brightest people from
around the world who want to study and
work in your country.
As long as those doors are open, as long as your
environment is welcoming, you're going to
remain a great country.
If you start shutting those doors and excluding people and
making it difficult for them to come here, then you will
experience a downturn in your society and your economy.
And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that point.
Before I conclude, I just want to take a moment to recognize
55 institutions, including I'm proud to say my own alma
mater, Tufts University.
Who's a Tufts' person here?
Oh, there you are.
All right.
And these are universities that are being recognized
today that provide opportunities for talented
national students who otherwise would not have been
able to study in the United States.
So I want to particularly take my hat off to all of you
who've won these awards.
At the State Department we know that the culture and
educational impact of the highly motivated students you
attract from around the world with very diverse backgrounds
can have an invaluable impact on our
campuses and on our country.
And I know that you heard yesterday morning about a
student who had fled war and violence in his home country,
to become the student body president of Lynn University,
showing his American peers what democracy meant to him.
So I want to commend all of those colleges and
universities for including international students among
the students that you support.
Your decision to extend a helping hand to an
international student, your commitment to creating
opportunities where they previously didn't exist is at
the very core of American values.
So I'd ask first of all those universities and colleges
getting awards if their representatives could please
stand up, including Tufts?
And I want to thank all of you.