Answer:
Only a third of Americans are thought to hold passports -- compared to about 50 percent in Australia, more than 60 percent in Canada and some 80 percent in the United Kingdom. "
First of all, in order to travel even 500 miles from home in Europe, you need a passport, or at least you did until the EU got started.
In America, you can travel 500 miles from home for vacation very easily without one. And in Europe, it also doesn't cost an arm and a leg to take an international flight to visit a foreign country. You can hop a train or even drive. The average American faces hours of expensive plane or boat travel in order to go somewhere where a passport is required. I guess if you're made out of money you should have a passport, but millions of Americans don't live the kind of lifestyle where they can afford long-distance travel. (For some reason, this fact is really hard for jet-setting academics to get their minds around.)
For that matter, why would the average American want to go overseas, where they'll just be derided as a tourist? Sure, I would love to visit darkest Burma and hang out with some hill tribes, but pretty much the best that the average American can hope for, with the small amount of vacation time and money that they have for these things, is to not even get to Burma, and spend a weekend in Patpong.
Secondly...
"When they get wherever they are going, it is crucial that they live and study not just with other Americans, but also with local people of their own generation."
So basically they can go to Florence or London and party with other similarly entitled kids? You forgot "local people of a class other than their own."
Explanation:
