United States of Eurasia

One of my manifesto points was that there needs to be more non-European study abroad opportunities as part of our undergraduate degrees. I believe this because when you benchmark some Imperial departments against others you will see some have the University of California and the University of Melbourne as partners, while others only have partners inside Europe.

Furthermore, when you compare certain departments to others at rival institutions that we compete with for UCAS applications, we are far behind them with respect to our partners outside Europe. One example is that the Biochemistry, Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics courses at UCL offer a chance to study at Caltech (the university the Big Bang Theory show is set), while chemistry at Imperial is the only department within the Faculty of Natural Sciences with study abroad partners outside Europe – Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).

So if Imperial is supposed to be one of the top 10 institutions in the world (according to both the QS and Times Higher Education world rankings), then why do not all departments offer these study abroad placements around the globe at other world class institutions? And why are Imperial’s competitors offering these opportunities, while we seem content with the ones we currently offer?

As you can see this is something I feel passionately about, but I need to make sure I am not being

hen you compare certain departments to others at rival institutions that we compete with for UCAS applications, we are far behind them with respect to our partners outside Europe

delusional and I am doing my job by representing your views. To make sure I am being a good DPE, I have set up the one-off International Mobility Survey that will start next Monday and you can fill it in via this link. You also have the chance of winning a Kindle Fire - not bad for less than five minutes work!

This will not just focus on study abroad options but also whether Imperial should be offering more

To make sure I am being a good DPE, I have set up the one-off International Mobility Survey that will start next Monday

funded summer research placements around the world. Something MIT has been doing since 2009, branded under the name of MISTI and has proven popular with their undergraduate cohort.

I am not going to spend forever giving reasons to why I think more international opportunities outside Europe should be given to our students, but here are a few I want to leave you with:

• Some current and potential prospective students aren’t willing to learn a language in order to carry out an exchange programme. This can lead to potentially disgruntled students and Imperial missing out on talented undergraduates to our competitors.
• A competitive year abroad scheme acts as an incentive for undergraduates to work harder within their first 2 or 3 years of their degree, which I believe will lead to a better quality of Imperial graduates.
• To help Imperial’s international reputation grow, graduates now need to be internationally mobile.
• According to a recent British Council Survey: 54% of 18 -24 year-olds feel their career prospects would have been better if they had studied or worked abroad.