If education breaks all barriers, globalization breaks boundaries of space and time. Combined, they provide the best opportunities for today’s students to achieve anything they wish. The sky is the only limit for students to go after their passions.
Globalization is relatively a new word coined in the 1970s. Three things that made globalization possible are airplane, telephone, and the internet. The last internet is the game changer, with also bringing digitalization to the world in a fast pace. Globalization and digitalization have opened a floodgate of opportunities for education and future careers for students now.
Gone are the days going far away for a reference to know something related to academic and research needs by students. The internet and the smartphone bring most of the requirements to the fingertips. Hence in this information age, globalization meets the knowledge, education, and learning challenges and opportunities.
Students who want to pursue higher education overseas had to face numerous difficulties in the past. But globalization has opened the doors of higher education anywhere in the world. If the student is skilled enough, all the opportunities that he or she want to pursue are at their fingertips. With online information of all the scholarships of reputed institutions at fingertips, the student should only be ready to go for it.
With most of the qualifying tests in renowned institutions are done online, there is no need to fly overseas to write them to be qualified for their courses. Also, even the scholarship needs are fulfilled online to meet the requirements to make even the not so financially sound students to study abroad to become what they want to be in the future.
Globalization in education also has negative opinions from many quarters. Since the level of education has gone international, countries without such kind of facilities may end up not producing much talent in the future. But like any great inventions and new findings, there will be challenges to face and come out successfully. Though globalization in education poses many challenges, its opportunities outweigh them.
The significant benefits of globalized education
- Enables students to learn new skills and assimilate new knowledge
- Increases connectivity to the global educational fraternity for better opportunities
- Improves communication around the world for better educational and career prospects
- Prepare student for multinational leadership roles
- Enhances students to manipulate symbols for highly productive employment
- Enables the students’ ability for acquiring and utilizing knowledge
- Enhances students to access, assess, adapt and apply knowledge
- Enables to think independently for exercising appropriate decisions without fear of failure
- Creates increased numbers of scientifically and technically trained professionals
- Encourages students to be the proper team player and lead or work in teams of a different culture
- Opens doors to students to pursue studies of their choices anywhere in the world
- Provides research opportunities in far off institutions
- Enables the transfer of knowledge between institutions to benefit and uplift the knowledge level of the students mutually
- Made overseas education not only the privilege of the rich and famous but also to anyone with the right skills
- Increased job opportunities across the world for students to focus during studies and work in their desired jobs anywhere in the world
- New methods, curriculum, pedagogy, and many ways take education to international standards for students to benefit
- With competition from anywhere in the world, the standard is upgrading every year for innovative education
Globalization of education also has its challenges. There are claims that it is only benefiting in developed countries and sparely in developing countries. The students in other countries are left high and dry to not able to compete with international standards.
Most of it is accurate, and only a few developing countries can benefit from globalization in education. Experts feel that in the long run, even the left out developing countries and also the economically downtrodden countries will benefit from the globalization of education. Even before globalization, many reputed scientists and Noble laureates were from developing countries. And now, with globalization, it is only set to increase.
The developing countries have to rise to the standards of other countries. But even students from these countries can pursue higher education anywhere in the world. With so many scholarships and part-time jobs available overseas, studying abroad is not as severe as some years back. Only the will and the right skill is enough to have the dream studies abroad to have an excellent professional career also in the future.