Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings co-hosted the U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education, organized by the Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), to engage leaders of U.S. higher education in a renewed partnership to strengthen international education and emphasize its importance to the national interest. 

The 2006 Summit resulted in a number of direct outcomes -- several initiatives were announced at the Summit and others subsequently shaped by its discussions. ECA is providing over $50 million in fiscal year 2008 for program activities related to Summit initiatives, including:

• Twenty-six million dollars annually in new resources for U.S. students and teachers to learn critically needed foreign languages under the President's National Security Language Initiative;
  

• The launching of a new exchange model to more actively engage Community Colleges in international education funded in fiscal year 2008 at approximately $7 million, and additionally supplemented by funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development;
  

• A doubling of resources to increase study abroad for U.S. undergraduate students through the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program, now at nearly $6 million;

• The creation of the International Fulbright Science and Technology Award for Ph.D study at top U.S. institutions. Funded at $7 million, this scholarship program responds to a critical need identified by U.S. leaders in higher education and is designed to help reaffirm the U.S.’s pre-eminence and competitiveness in the fields of science, technology, and engineering;
  

• Additional targeted efforts to support the promotion of U.S. higher education abroad; indicators now point to a historic level of international students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities in the 2007-08 academic year;
  

• Close to one fourth of U.S. university president Summit attendees have participated in federal government-U.S. higher education promotional delegations overseas organized by ECA to carry the U.S.’s message of openness and collaboration through higher education to our most important regional markets in Asia, South Asia, and Latin America;

• With the support of Congress, ECA has nearly tripled its resources since 2002 for educational advising overseas to nearly $11 million, its highest level ever;
  

• ECA partnered with the Department of Commerce on video marketing of U.S. higher education in China, and is on its own producing Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic language video material to better explain U.S. higher education resources to international students and their parents.

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