my global experiences

The question was posed of how much value there was in a global education. 30 years ago when I had a brief (21 days) semester break without clinical affiliations, I took the opportunity to backpack in Europe...about a dozen cities, lots of night trains, days with only stale bread as food, etc. This brief time of seeing this small but different piece of the world through my limited and financially challenged lens was life altering and in some senses, more valuable than my four years of college. When my son had the opportunity to spend a semester abroad, I enthusiastically encouraged him to go for it. Although his college experience at King's College in London has paled in comparison to what he would have experienced had he stayed at BC for the semester, the growth he has experienced on weekends has been amazing. His travels have become progressively more challenging, going for weekends to Brussels and Amsterdam with friends, then to Spain for a week, again with friends and being able to speak the language. Last weekend he went alone to Paris where he did not speak the language at all and is ending his trip with a week traveling alone in Italy. It is hard to imagine any classroom experiences having as much of an impact as this travel and independence. He is becoming aware of how different the world is in these places and has an understanding of how this is merely the tip of the iceberg, as there are far more cultures which are vastly different from us than these large cities. As he becomes more and more responsible for himself, he is realizing that the politics of the world affect him personally, whether it was when he took the wrong train in France and got off in the middle of some type of riot with tanks and tear gas or realizing that if British Airways goes on strike, he could get stuck in Italy and not be able to make it back to London for his return to Boston. This type of real world learning was not something that had been happening at BC. In that traditional learning environment, he did what he always did, nose to the grindstone to complete tasks on time, not over extending and then making sure to have time to play basketball, fantasy football, attend sporting events, etc. When Kim Cofino spoke about the changing educational environment, it range true to me on the college level. Didn't my son learn more by his travels in London and around Europe than he did in the classes he was taking? How much of that travel could be incorporated into his courses and how much can the courses of the future utilize virtual travel? Can a person get a comprehensive and meaningful education out of online courses? Can some of the current expenses of a college education be mitigated by gaining a "Global Online Degree"?