James Turner reflects on the start of the Trust’s 2014 US programme

If you’d been part of a humanitarian catastrophe in a far off country and, amidst the devastation, you saw a grey-hulled ship coming into the harbour, which flag would you want it to be flying? The UN? The EU? Russia or China? Or the stars and stripes of the USA?

This question was posed, not as part of a complex application process for citizenship, but during an hour long session the American Ambassador to the UK, Matthew Barzun (pictured), led with our US programme students last week. The teenagers were gathered in London for the first‎ residential  in the Trust’s 2014 US Programme, run in partnership with the US-UK Fulbright Commission. The Ambassador’s excellent presentation was the highlight of the four day event during which the students and their parents learnt more about US colleges, the admissions process and financial aid. The event was covered in Monday’s Guardian.

Now in its third year‎, our US programme has a track record of success, with about a third of participants ending up at US Colleges accessing millions of dollars of financial aid. That’s testament to the brilliant work of my colleagues at Fulbright, plus the other people and organisations who make it happen – Edvice, CATES and a whole host of volunteers who give up their time to be application readers, speakers and mentors.

As I have written before, the programme‎ is not about promoting the US as a better option per se than the UK – it is simply about allowing low/middle income students to make informed choices, just like their affluent peers.  We know from last week’s British Council Survey that more and more young are considering studying overseas. That can only be a good thing, provided the opportunity is not the preserve of the elite. David Willetts has written before about why it is desirable for Britain to promote more, not less, educational exchange.  Like everything we do, the aim is to ensure this new frontier in educational opportunity is for the many, not the few.

And as for the Ambassador’s question? Perhaps surprisingly given the context, the students wanted to see the ship flying the United Nations or the EU flag ahead of the US.  So, full marks to our 2014 cohort for being independent thinkers too.