I wrote in a recent blog that I had been to China in connection with a program there run by Illinois Central College, a community college in Peoria, Illinois. I want to expand here on that program, because what ICC is doing, in Peoria and in China, is my idea of global education, and holds the key for the ability of today's students to thrive in tomorrow's global economy.
ICC does two things in China. First, it works with Chinese colleges to help train dealers and distributors there for Peoria-based Caterpillar. This is done on contract with Caterpillar, which pays for the service. Second, ICC sends some of its students to China for an intense education in both Mandarin and in the way the Chinese do business.
As I wrote earlier, there are many obstacles to China's goal of being the world's dominant economy, but so far, it is growing and maturing at a breakneck pace that is simply dazzling when seen up close. More to the point, China is focused, driven and ambitious in a way the United States and the Midwest have not been for a half century. As the Midwest's industrial might and middle class shrink, China's is growing. China's immediate target is to achieve "moderate prosperity" for most of its citizens within a decade: at the same time, America's future ability to support most of its people at any level of economic decency is very much in doubt.
In short, the economy of the future will be a global one and China may dominate it, as the United States dominated the industrial era. This means that the American workers and cities that will thrive in this future probably will have to be plugged into a Chinese-led economy, in the same way that persons and cities around the world in the 20th century were plugged into the American-led economy and the American way of doing business.
This is the grounding that ICC is giving its students. ICC is an Illinois community college, not the Harvard business school. But the successful workers of the future -- not just the Harvard MBAs and bank CEOs but the workers and managers with the best jobs -- will be at home in this new global economy. Any city that has a lot of these workers and managers, running a lot of globally-connected companies, will be the places to work, live and invest in the 21st century.
Peoria knows this. The leaders of Peoria know and appreciate what's going on on the ICC campus, up in the hills of East Peoria across the Illinois River.
When I was researching my book on the Midwest and globalization, I went to Peoria and was told I should talk with Dr. John Irwin, the president of ICC. I set a date and found Dr. Irwin somewhat jet-lagged, having just returned from China. I asked what a president of a Peoria community college was doing in China, and heard about the college's ties with Caterpillar, and hence with China and with other countries where Cat did business. ICC, it became clear, was as much part of the global academy as the University of Illinois and other major universities.
This China connection led to an agreement with Shenzhen Polytechnic, a big three-year college in the boom town of Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, to start an exchange program. Since then, ICC has been sending groups -- about five to ten students, competitively chosen -- to Shenzhen for a three-month program of language and business training.
I flew to Hong Kong with two ICC professors, Barbara Burton, who directs this project, and Jill Wright, an associate dean who used to teach in China, plus Hong Ricketts, a Chinese native who met her husband at the Caterpillar factory in Tianjin and who now teaches at ICC. In Shenzhen, we met the latest contingent of students, four men and three women, who had arrived three days earlier and were just settling into dorms and classes at Shenzhen Polytec. Their leader was Matt Fuller, a young Peoria man who was in the first class of ICC students to go to Shenzhen: Matt now speaks fluent Mandarin, is about to get his master's degree from the University of Missouri and talks about working fulltime in China.
We all spent most of the next two weeks on the road, going to Tianjen, Beijing, Fuzhou and a small industrial city called Changle. We saw the sights -- the Forbidden City, the Great Wall -- but mostly we visited Chinese factories -- that Cat plant in Tianjen, a nylon factory in Changle. We saw how Chinese businesses work, how workers live, how cities are modernizing, how infrastructure is being transformed. In the process, the students saw a slice of Chinese life. Then the professors and I flew back to Chicago, while the students returned to Shenzhen and the classroom.
Now let's think about for a moment. Most of these young people are the first in their families to go to college. Only one, so far as I know, had ever been abroad. Some had earned tuition money by working for Caterpillar in Peoria. And here they are suddenly, on the floor of a Cat plant in China.
This, as I said, is global education. It's taking young people, most of whom grew up without the money or opportunity to travel, and throwing them into the center of the global economy. It's teaching them that they have to be smart and worldly and multilingual to survive in this new economy. It's showing them that there's more than one way to run a business or an economy. All are going to live in this global economy, and they're learning how that economy really works.
These students know they're getting a rare opportunity, and they're grabbing it with both hands. Back home in Chicago, I ride the bus next to young Chicagoans who while away their commute playing computer games on their iPhones. On buses in China, the students whipped out their notebooks and whiled away the time practicing their Chinese calligraphy or giving each other vocabulary quizzes.
On our first night in Beijing, I walked to the Forbidden City with two of the students. As we walked along the wall beneath the phantasmagorical towers, one of the students murmured, "I never believed I would ever get here." At that moment, I think I was seeing a life changing.
None of these students will ever be the same. Neither will the city where they live. Most of these students told me they want to spend their lives in or near Peoria. Not all Midwestern cities are going to have the necessary links to China and the new economy. Peoria, I bet, will be one that does.
ICC is thinking ahead. It wants to augment the program by offering a Certified Global Business Professional certificate (CGBP), earned through study in global supply chain management, global marketing, trade financing and international business management. All this is based on the realization that Peoria and central Illinois have to export to survive, and that the biggest export market of all will be China.
Some students will take their CGBP certificate and, like Matt Fuller, go on to bachelor or master's degrees at other universities. But others will stay in Peoria and, armed with their new global knowledge, go to work for local companies that are going to need good people, at all levels, who understand that there's a new world out there.
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