Consul General Speeches

Remarks as prepared for delivery at the MBA Fair, Barlaeus Gymnasium, Amsterdam, September 23, 2007

 Listen to a podcast of this speech (14 minutes, 7 MB)

Good afternoon.

Thank you for including me in this terrific event.  I am grateful to have the opportunity to discuss with you opportunities for you to continue your education, and specifically to expand your awareness of the wealth of opportunities in the United States available to students from The Netherlands.

Since you are here today, it is clear you are already considering study abroad.  I am here to tell you that you can make no better decision than to study in the United States.
First, there is the matter of choice.  There are some 4,000 institutions of higher learning in the United States.

Some of the finest are represented at today’s MBA Fair.  Second, there is variety; in size, location and type of institution.  But perhaps the most compelling reason to consider studying in the U.S. is the quality of the education you will receive.  Our colleges and universities – including the ones represented here today – are world renowned.  They attract the leading minds in the academic and research communities all over the world, as well as almost 600,000 international students.  Many have remarkable academic, research, cultural and athletic facilities, and libraries with impressive collections.

In addition to these tremendous advantages, American universities offer tremendous flexibility, and the opportunity for personal engagement in shaping your academic experience.  Most universities encourage students to tailor their program to their individual interests and objectives.  In fact, students are expected to actively explore, question and participate in the learning process.  In addition to the academic rigor of a U.S. MBA program, these are skills that will serve you well in today’s global and competitive job market.

There is one factor that might not have made it into you calculus of whether to pursue an MBA in the United States that is, I think, as important to consider as the others.  And that is that the experience of life on a university campus in America is, quite simply, irreplaceable.  University life offers a wide range of opportunities:  from internships to club membership, to special cultural and athletic events, to travel around your adopted home.   You will make friends, become part of a new community, and develop professional and personal contacts that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

There are real risks attendant to the decision to study away from your home country, but I have seen over and over again that they are well worth taking.  International education and exchange have become increasingly important to me, but these are interests that I have held for many years beyond my career at the U.S. State Department.  As a student, I chose to pursue a degree in diplomacy and foreign affairs, and benefited greatly from the diverse views and perspectives of the international students that were in my classes with me, and of course from the international scholars who were among my most influential professors.  As a public servant working for the U.S. Congress, I was often struck by how much direct foreign experience contributed to insights with regard to foreign affairs issues.  And as a diplomat, I have met so many people who have told me that studying in the United States forever changed their lives.  Beyond these individual experiences, there is tremendous value in the understanding spread by interactions between Americans and citizens of other nations.

International education is not only important to me, it is important to the United States.  I fact, I would say it is essential to U.S. national interests.  America is a nation of immigrants, and has always welcomed visitors from all over the globe.  A former Secretary of State described the U.S. as a “nation of nations.”  And that is as true today as it has ever been.  Before I came to The Netherlands, one of the most memorable experiences I had in my previous job was attending two naturalization ceremonies – those are the ceremonies when immigrants officially become American citizens.  On a single, sunny day in a convention center in Miami Beach, we welcomed over 6,000 new American citizens from one hundred different nations.  And universities and communities all across the United States extend this same kind of warm welcome to international students.

There is an economic component to our interest as well.  The U.S. is preeminent in the field of higher education and gained that standing with the contributions of countless students and academics from all over the world.  International students attending U.S. colleges and universities accounted for $13.5 billion in revenues to their schools and communities last year.  Beyond the economic benefits, we as a nation game so much from the people around the world who visit our country, study there, work in our dynamic business sectors, and conduct research at some of the leading scientific facilities in the world.

With these interests in mind, my organization, the Department of State, sponsors a number of international exchange programs, including Fulbright scholarships and other grants that offer a particularly compelling illustration of the impact of academic exchanges.  The Fulbright Program in The Netherlands is a strong and vibrant one.  I see that Marcel Oomen is with us today, so I will leave it to him to answer questions about Fulbright in more detail.  Yet I think it is worth pointing out that, all over the world, since the Fulbright Program’s inception over fifty years ago, over 279,500 people, some 105,400 from the United States and 174,100 from other countries, have participated in these exchanges.
In addition, the Department of State’s International Visitor Program promotes mutual understanding and closer ties among people and nations by bringing current and future leaders of other nations to the United States for targeted education opportunities.  Well over 100,000 International Visitors have participated in these programs – some 5,000 people each year – and they include more than 200 current and former heads of state and 1,500 cabinet-level ministers.,  Many of them are names that will be familiar to you:  Jan Peter Balkenende, for example.  In the current Balkenende cabinet, Foreign Minister Verhagen, Economic Affairs Minister van der Hoeven, Transport Minister Eurlings, and Agriculture Minister Verburg all participated in International Visitor Programs.  And Development Minister Koenders was a Fulbrighter.  Some other notables of U.S.-sponsored exchange programs worldwide include:

          King Abdullah of Jordan
          Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan
          Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
          Former UN Secretary General Koffi Annan

The names on the honor rolls of the business, scientific, arts and academic communities are equally impressive and we want more Dutch citizens to take their place among them.  We also know from experience that the relationships that or forged during educational exchanges in the U.S. form a foundation for lasting partnerships, not just between people, but between institutions, and societies, and nations.

At the U.S. Consulate General in Amsterdam, we have the honor and the responsibility of helping to make sure that every single qualified student, scholar or exchange visitor from The Netherlands gets to his or her program on time by providing efficient and transparent visa services.  This responsibility has become all the more important due to the changes in visa processing that we have implemented since 2001.

For several years now we have made students and exchange visitors a priority with regard to visa processing.  What does that mean?  It means that when you seek an interview appointment for a visa to study in the United States, you will get one as a priority matter.  We hope that you will plan in advance as well as you can, but we will do all we can to make sure you begin your MBA program on time.  This past summer, we even opened up special processing times exclusively reserved for student visa applicants and in this way were able to ensure that hundreds of students got their visas promptly, even during a time when we experience increased demand in all visa categories.

We have also gone to great lengths to give students more information so that they are better able to plan their travel.  This past April, the Consulate General launched its own website.  This might sound like rather a late step into the Internet age, but what we wanted to do was get it right and design a site that is transparent, user-friendly, up to date, and devoid of the baffling bureaucratic language that can sometimes be associated with government procedures.  Visa application information is laid out in a clear, step-by-step fashion, complete with downloadable forms and plenty of reference information to guide you on your way.  Having more information about the process helps you to be better prepared – and successful – when you attend your visa interview.

We are also looking at other ways of taking advantage of the Internet.  For the launch of our new website, we conducted a web chat during which members of the public were welcome to submit questions about visa and other consular issues directly to me, and get the answers in real time.  This is something we plan to do regularly and perhaps in the near future we will dedicate a web chat to student visa issues.  And today we are recording this event so that it can be available on our site as a podcast, allowing those who were not able to attend to perhaps benefit from some of the information provided.

You undoubtedly saw the advertisements for the MBA Fair that posted the question, “Ready for an international top career?”  With an MBA education in the United States, you will be.  I cannot imagine better educational opportunities for you than those available in the U.S. and far from being the exception, MBA programs lead in this regard.  I am here to assure you that the U.S. Consulate General in Amsterdam is ready to support you toward this objective.

I hope by this time next year that we will have already seen many, many of you at the Consulate General and that you will either be preparing to begin your MBA program in the United States, or will have already have done so.

My colleagues from the Consulate General have been here all morning to answer your questions, and we look forward to continuing to do so.  Thanks very much for your interest and for your attention this afternoon.