The UK is one of the most globalised economies and societies in the world. An internationally experienced and culturally adept workforce must therefore be even more crucial to our prosperity and growth than it is for others.
At the British Council, we have provided international opportunities for people in the UK for over 75 years - through education, the English language and the arts - and we passionately believe that the ability to work effectively with people from different cultures is critical in the 21st century.
So, it is notable that in 2010, while there were 370,000 international students in the UK, there were just 33,000 UK students overseas.
While this is of course testament to the fantastic quality of our higher education institutions, we wanted to understand the reasons behind this gap. We commissioned two reports to find out more about the choices students make and what businesses are looking for in UK school leavers and graduates.
'Next Generation UK', prepared by YouGov, explores the attitudes, experiences and aspirations of UK undergraduates.
The research was eye-opening. It tells us that, actually, our young people are incredibly cosmopolitan. They have a strong awareness of the wider world, as well as a great desire to participate in it. The students surveyed were interested in travelling, many said they would consider working or volunteering overseas and many more even described themselves as having an international outlook.
But less than half thought that having this international outlook would aid their prospects in study or work; having an international outlook to increase one's employability was seen as the lowest value of importance for young people.
This is bad news for the UK. In our research with Think Global, where ICM surveyed 500 businesses to explore the importance employers place on international skills and experiences, the results revealed that almost 80% of UK employers consider knowledge and awareness of the wider world to be more important than degree classification, or subject choice. Three quarters of businesses feel the UK is in danger of being left behind by emerging countries unless young people learn to think more globally.
So the stakes are high, and the challenge is clear: How can we fuse together the skills that businesses need with the experiences that young people want, for a more prosperous future?
The UK can already tell many success stories in this area:
At Aston University, a high percentage of students undertake work placements as part of their degree, and of these many are overseas. Another great example is the London College of Fashion who, in partnership with the Beijing Institute of Fashion and Technology, have been sending their students to China to gain what is absolutely vital, practical experience in what soon will be the world's largest economy.
Indeed, when today's students enter employment, they will need to be able to compete in a world where links with China are essential. This is why, for the past eight years, the British Council has run an annual nationwide Mandarin Chinese Speaking Competition in partnership with HSBC. This supports and promotes the teaching of Mandarin Chinese as a modern foreign language in UK schools.
Speaking another country's language is an essential skill, but being immersed in its culture provides equally important experiences. International student mobility programmes such as the EU-funded Erasmus scheme enabled almost 12,000 UK students to study or work for up to a year abroad in 2009-10. We know for a fact this experience makes participants more employable.
Economic success has long been a matter of survival of the fittest, and fitness is now measured in international skills, cultural fluency. It is crucial that young people in the UK are made more aware of this, or else we will lose our global competitiveness. Whilst Erasmus applications from the UK are growing every year, we still lag far behind Germany, France and Spain.
We believe therefore that it's vital the British government continues to support the Erasmus fee-waiver scheme, so students who do go abroad for a year won't have to continue paying their fees to their 'home' institution while they're away. The teaching of foreign languages must be embedded strongly in to the school curricula.
We are committed to supporting the UK's education and business sectors in working together, not only to ensure young people understand the critical importance of having an international outlook for their future employment, and are aware of the opportunities available - but to expand existing opportunities and develop new ones.
It is in the best interests of our businesses, our education institutions, and the UK as a whole that we can reach out and compete successfully in the global economy. But this isn't just about having the best academically qualified graduates - the evidence shows our next generation must have the best cultural relations skills for the UK to generate the social and economic prosperity that we so desperately need.