Study Abroad

At the University of Texas, apparently, the provost tells all incoming students only two things: do not decide your major until sophomore year, and study abroad.

An interesting debate in study abroad circles is how to integrate diversity/multicultural education with intercultural competence/communication. Diversity studies tends to emphasize how differences among students and within societies are the result of inequalities of power, while intercultural competence tends to be about learning how elite groups communicate with one another. How much common ground is there in these two approaches/themes? Not very much it would seem. So there would seem to be no sound "learning objective reason" for having the two themes be part of a single requirement, as some schools do.