Should i go into international affairs

Some of the PVOs are religious in origin; others are entirely secular. Some are quite large, others are minuscule. They share a lack of direct government control and general concern for humanitarian issues. The American government administers some foreign aid through some of these agencies, and they have been prominent in such issues as famine relief in Africa. Many of these organizations employ small permanent staffs; recruitment is often based on previous performance as a volunteer.

Salaries are low, but many people find the work extremely rewarding. American universities serve, among other things, as repositories for international expertise. Faculty work within departments, usually organized around the major disciplines such as economics, political science, and history.

Their job consists of teaching communicating skills and knowledge to students and research creating new knowledge and communicating it to others. University faculty usually have a great deal of freedom in selecting what they will research and teach, enabling them to develop specialized knowledge in a wide variety of areas. For the past fifteen years or so, university teaching jobs have been quite scarce, making it hard to encourage undergraduates to aim toward such careers; however, there may be increased demand for college teachers as the next baby boom reaches college age and a large number of current college faculty retire.

Some recent research suggests that there will be less change in political science than in other disciplines. Therefore, college teaching has become a more reasonable career choice for current undergraduates. The only relevant degree for college teaching is the Ph. In this. See also the discussion of political science graduate programs below. Internships are a critical supplement to any sort of educational background to get interesting jobs in international affairs.

Because of the informal hiring processes, personal contacts are indispensable. Most students do not have close relatives high up in these organizations; internships are the next best thing.

Internships give students direct experience in job situations. Students learn for themselves whether they like this sort of work and what is required to make a career in it. Often they get direct job offers. If not, they make personal contacts and get recommendations from job supervisors; if nothing else, they have something on their record which distinguishes them from the thousands of other people who will graduate with B.

Two general rules of internships: anything is better than nothing, and the longer the better. Summer internships are the most common, and if that is what is available, take it; however, students should be aware of some limitations of summer internships.

Summer internships are limited to summer months, which are short in time frame. Moreover, summer interns are so common that they are often used by offices as clerical labor, people to run xerox machines, address envelopes, etc. Many students use the experience for socializing, which is fine but detracts from the image of those with more serious interests.

Lastly, so many students take summer internships now that employers are less impressed than previously. Internships in Washington are extremely useful, but they are not the same as experience abroad, and such experience can be very valuable in getting jobs; however, there are several options to consider.

Students can spend a semester abroad studying in practically any country they choose. It is also possible to work abroad, although this is sometimes difficult because of local laws: volunteer service is often a better bet. After college, the Peace Corps is an option worth seriously considering. The Peace Corps is an agency of the U.

Volunteers often work on their own in rigorous physical conditions. Aside from living abroad, Peace Corps people get independent management experience at a very early age.

As a result, Peace Corps experience is highly valued by employers hiring for international jobs. There is no single educational path to international jobs; in fact, it is quite common for people in the same position to have very different sorts of educational backgrounds. Moreover, there are many people in interesting jobs with only B. Either graduate education or experience preferably both is usually essential to gaining access to these positions.

Many very senior people in international affairs are lawyers, but law school is probably not the most efficient way to start a career in international affairs.

Law school is three years of a curriculum which is mostly irrelevant to international relations. It is difficult to get into good law schools, and there is usually no financial aid except for loans. The current surplus of lawyers means that law school graduates are now having serious trouble getting jobs. It is true that students may be able to get an interesting non-legal job with a law degree, since employers figure they must be reasonably intelligent if they have survived law school, but there are other alternatives.

If students want to be a lawyer, go to law school. If they do not, they should think seriously about the alternatives. There is a good deal of confusion about international law as a career. It is convenient to divide international law into public and private. Public international law is concerned with whether or not the behavior of governments corresponds with international law, whether the American invasion of Panama was legal, for example.

This is what the term international law means to most people, but there are very few institutions which will pay people to do such analysis. The State Department keeps about eighty lawyers on staff for this purpose, but most of the other people in the field teach in universities probably as many in political science departments as in law schools.

Most international lawyers are concerned with private international law, how individuals and corporations can carry on transactions within different and sometimes conflicting legal systems. If a tanker registered in Liberia and owned by a company in the Bahamas carrying a load of oil owned by an American corporation hits a Russian submarine and dumps its oil onto Belgian beaches, who pays what to whom?

Private international law is popular because people and organizations will pay money to get answers to these sorts of questions. This kind of work, in turn, sometimes leads to other things; international lawyers often serve as representatives for multinational corporations to the public and governments, a kind of business diplomatic corps. Nonetheless, international law is a fairly minor branch of law, and this is reflected in law school curricula; if studetns take two international law courses in three years, they will be doing well.

The University of Iowa seems to be an exception; it is advertising a more extensive program in international and comparative law. Law school is the best alternative for anyone who wants to practice private international law, but students must remember that they must be a lawyer first and an international lawyer second. If they want to study public international law, students may actually do better in a Ph.

There is no pre-law curriculum in the United States; essentially law schools will take students regardless of their major if their grade point average and law board scores are high enough. Inasmuch as curriculum makes a difference, they prefer students with broad interests in the liberal arts and tend to frown on pre-professional degrees. In particular they recommend that students do not take law courses before they get to law school, arguing probably correctly that other institutions will just teach them incorrectly and that they will have to undo all the damage others have caused.

However, anyone interested in law school should take one course which requires intensive reading of. Law school is often attractive to students who want to get an "interesting" job but do not want to be lawyers. For such students business school is often a better bet. It takes two rather than three years, it is a little easier to get into a good one being female helps in business school admissions; law schools admissions are mostly sex-blind , and there are still jobs for new MBA graduates although for several years there have been rumblings that this market also will be saturated.

The jobs are not limited to corporations either; American business schools claim to teach management, the coordination of people and resources to accomplish a given goal, which is what all large organizations try to do. As a result, government and even non-profit institutions are hiring business school graduates for jobs which, twenty years ago, would probably have gone to lawyers. Most people now assume that MBA graduates, like lawyers, are intelligent, and as a bonus they may even have some useful skills.

Unlike law schools, most business schools have a separate department called International Business; however, these departments are not usually highly regarded within their own schools, in part because they do not rely heavily on econometrics and are therefore thought to be "soft.

As explained above, very few young Americans are now sent abroad by corporations. Therefore students must get hired by the corporation for their substantive skills and later try to develop a special interest in the international side of things. The recommended strategy is to take a double major in a substantive area marketing, finance, management, etc. Among the "regular" business schools, the best by reputation are Harvard and Stanford; New York University has been cited as the best in international business, and Yale's School of Organization and Management is an interesting attempt to combine training in business and public affairs.

There are also a couple of programs especially geared to students interested in international business. The American Graduate School of International Business, just outside of Phoenix, more familiarly known as Thunderbird, is the only major business school in the country not affiliated with a university, and it has developed an impressive reputation for training high quality personnel in international business.

The University of South Carolina business school has developed a program which requires a foreign business internship. Both of these programs stress language competence. This means you can combine International Relations with another subject like Economics, or maybe even a language.

Find study programmes in International Relations. Patrick is an expert on international education. Your gateway to universities in Europe. Study International Relations?

Everything you need to know. Photo by The White House, Public domain. Author: Patrick Atack Patrick is an expert on international education. Featured universities:. University of Helsinki Helsinki , Finland 73 study programmes.

Hertie School Berlin , Germany 4 study programmes. Falmouth University Falmouth, United Kingdom 75 study programmes. Why get an MPA degree? Six reasons to study a Master of Public Administration. Study Social Sciences: Which subject should you choose? Privacy policy. There are quite a lot of job openings for newly qualified graduates in economic posts as national and international bodies move to an evidence-based system of defining and implementing work priorities.

Consultants conduct specialised investigations or studies, write reports based on their findings, present quantitative and qualitative outcomes and making recommendations based on their area of expertise. There are a number of non-governmental organisations NGOs and independent voluntary sector organisations with international affair roles that have openings for research consultants with International Relations degrees and flair. You can work for an NGO, a national government press office or a multilateral organisation.

Graduates in International Relations with their wide knowledge of the links between local, national and international structures as well as of the mechanisms of global governance often opt for roles as specialised journalists in major news organisations or media and communications commentators and public relations experts in high-level roles.

Really, the world is your oyster. As the study of International Relations draws from interdisciplinary fields all career paths and job openings will depend on whatever specialisation at undergraduate or post-graduate level each student has. Take a look at some of the up-to-date jobs sites out there today from internships to paid work! Graduates armed with an International Relations degree generally find employment in any or all of the three major sectors — public, private or non-governmental organisations NGOS or Not for Profit organisations.

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