EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Belarusian universities are becoming internationally oriented. Transforming the national system of education, Belarus faces today a great deal of problems, connected with implementation of new disciplines, retraining of the faculty, reorienting university policies and programs towards international education. As our country is integrating with the European community and other countries, educators have to call for major changes in how Belarusian colleges and universities educate their students about the rest of the world. It should be recognized that without international competence, the nation’s standard of living is threatened and its competitive difficulties will increase. The world in which most adult Belarusians grew to maturity no longer exists. The cold war is over. Issues such as the environment, exchange rates, and economic competition, public health, national security, poverty, population control, and human rights affect any country domestically as well as internationally. Under these circumstances attending to domestic needs requires understanding their international context. We have to learn how to communicate across national, cultural, and socio-economic boundaries.

If we want to prosper in the new environment of the 21^st century, our colleges and universities must truly become institutions without bounda­ries. The nation must commit itself how to provide all students with a powerful, deep-rooted understanding of other languages, diverse cultures, and global issues. As a practical matter, we have to decide how our univer­sities and institutions of higher learning must orient themselves around new goals for international education. First, the educational experience must be infused with some degree of intercultural competence, including language competence. Professional or disciplinary skills are no longer sufficient.

Today’s graduate requires knowledge and understanding of how particular countries and geographic regions interact with the larger world. Graduates need an understanding of global systems. In addition to offering programs based on traditional academic disciplines, higher education must develop problem-focused programs of study that are more practical than theoretical and are oriented around problems in the real world.

Then we need to make education more democratic and universal. Education must become truly international, we could do it through applying lessons of international education within our own university programs.

None of these new goals will be achieved quickly or easily, but the benefits of putting them in place will far exceed the effort required:

– in future all students, whether interested in commerce and industry, literature, health professions, sociology, engineering, or agriculture, will find education well suited to their needs;

– businesses in an increasingly competitive world will be better able to expand into new international markets;

– faculty members and administrators will enjoy a richer intellectual life through mastery of new languages, exposure to new cultures as well as through extensive usage of computers in their work and everyday life.

This new approach to internationalize our institutions of higher learning offers many new challenges. More important, it promises new benefits.