< Previous64 JULY 2025 SITE SELECTION E arly this year, Johns Hopkins University Press published “Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn’t Matter — and What Really Does.” Written by veteran academic aff airs professional Ned Scott Laff and Chronicle of Higher Education Senior Writer Scott Carlson, the book encourages students to “hack” their college experience by crafting a personalized Field of Study. Here, by arrangement with the publisher and co-authors, Site Selection presents an adapted excerpt. — Ed. e scene: e Alfândega do Porto in Porto, Portugal, along the Douro River. In September , Porto hosted the Vacation Rental World Summit, where attendees included the technology companies behind websites like Airbnb and Vrbo, the trade journals covering the getaway locations, and the data crunchers selling services to optimize the property owners’ market potential. Sarah DuPre, today the senior partnerships director for AirDNA, one of those data- crunching companies, was a keynote speaker. Her presentation killed. “When I got off stage, people asked me if I was an economist or a statistician, which is a compliment because I am defi nitely not either of those things” Sarah said over Zoom about a month after her presentation, sitting on a veranda in Barcelona, where she lives. “I studied French and Spanish.” Maybe that’s a surprise to some readers — after all, among liberal-arts disciplines getting cut at colleges across the country, foreign-language departments appear on every list. Higher education increasingly responds to market forces, but the key population driving those market forces — students and their parents — generally do not understand the nature of liberal-arts disciplines or how to apply them in the world of work. And neither do many of the people guiding those students and parents in navigating college to get a good return on investment. e Strada Institute for the Future of Work and Emsi, a labor market analytics fi rm now called Lightcast, called the phenomenon the “translation chasm.” Sarah DuPre illustrates how a student from a small, unknown college with a liberal-arts major, armed with a Field of Study process, can open up unexpected career routes as she learns how to research the possibilities, fi ll in the blank spaces and trade on the hard, pragmatic skills discovered in liberal-arts disciplines. From Degree to Fulfi lling Career How One Globally Minded Student Navigated the ‘Translation Chasm’ WORKFORCE Barcelona business school ESADE has been a key part of Sarah DuPre’s career journey. Photo courtesy of ESADE Alumni SITE SELECTION JULY 2025 65 Sarah originally entered Columbia College, the women’s college her mom and aunt had attended, as an elementary- education major taking French and Spanish courses as electives, with the goal of becoming a French teacher. Sarah had long been obsessed with France. She attended one of the “odd” public primary schools in South Carolina that offers French, starting when she was seven years old. Later, a high-school teacher who grew up in France lent Sarah novels and storybooks from francophone authors. After she enrolled, Sarah wanted to study abroad at Columbia’s partner universities: the University of Angers, in France, and the University of Salamanca, in Spain. The problem, she soon learned, was that the education major did not allow her to study abroad. That led her to the Center for Engaged Learning. The office’s advice was to change majors from education to French, which could still lead to viable careers after college in the hidden job market — traditionally defined as jobs that aren’t advertised and are acquired through connections, but also encompassing the many ancillary or adjacent jobs that people may not know by name but are out there to find. Taking that advice, Sarah marched down to the registrar’s office on the last day of the spring semester of her freshman year to declare French as her major and Spanish as her minor. “Are you sure about this?” a staff member in the registrar’s office asked her more than once. Sarah nodded — she was certain that getting to Europe was now her goal. Even Sarah initially struggled with the translation chasm, but in her sophomore year, she began to engage in a Field of Study process that would help her bridge that gap. The Center for Engaged Learning’s mentors prompted her to play off a problem she’d long been concerned about: the number of South Carolina middle and high schools cutting their foreign-language programs. Starting her research investigative inquiry, she discovered the office for Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the consulate in New York City, which had a program advocating for the expansion of French courses in American schools. Late on a Friday afternoon, she put together a short email in French and sent it to the deputy counselor with a request to talk. The following Tuesday, she received a reply asking her to stop by the cultural- services office on the Upper East Side on Thursday to discuss her email. Sarah panicked. Clearly, the deputy counselor thought she was writing from Columbia University in Morningside Heights, not a little-known liberal-arts college in the South. She called and explained the misunderstanding. It didn’t seem to matter to the people at the consulate, who were captivated more by Sarah’s initiative and interest in the French language than by the college she attended. The consulate set up a remote meeting over Skype. Sarah took a day to prepare questions that addressed the social and political implications of keeping language programs alive. The deputy counselor was impressed with her grasp of French and her concern about what middle- and high-school students would lose without exposure to foreign languages and other cultures. When Sarah asked him about opportunities for experiential learning, he offered her a summer position at the consulate. Aside from a trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with her grandparents when she was a child, Sarah had never been outside South Carolina. New York City was a culture shock in the best of ways, as Sarah absorbed new perspectives and experiences. As Sarah’s cultural capital grew, she began to see people in important positions — those she once regarded as unapproachable — as normal human beings, and she realized she could join their ranks. This gave her the confidence to work the room at a gala, where she met the director of a dual- degree graduate program in business and French at New York University and one of the officers in a student organization that promotes French language, culture and business within the MBA program at Columbia University. These conversations opened up her view of the hidden job market for a French major. She had so many other options than just teaching French to schoolkids. Returning to Columbia College, Sarah planned her study-abroad experience: France in the spring and Spain the following fall. She researched the many cultural and career-relevant possibilities in Europe, approaching the experience differently from many of her peers, who tended to think of study abroad as simply about reading French literature and experiencing life in a different country. Sarah discovered she could take courses that would grant her certification from the French and Spanish education ministries to use those languages in business practices. She could also take business classes that would give her a different perspective on a facet of Western European culture not found in simply studying literature. Scan this QR code to access bonus content from “Hacking College” and a Field of Study glossary.66 JULY 2025 SITE SELECTION Sarah aced those courses and came back certified to use French and Spanish in myriad commercial settings. But when she returned to Columbia College, she was in for a shock: Her faculty advisor, the chair of the French department, would not accept her credits in business language or the French business courses as electives for the major. The department would only accept studies in French literature. Sarah ran headlong into a faction of higher education that views the study of liberal arts in college as mostly a personal exploration of the canon of humanistic knowledge, a faction that takes a skeptical view of college as career preparation. The liberal arts are not about arming students with the skill sets catered to a specific job, they say; in fact, these liberal-arts advocates often refer to those disciplines as “nonvocational.” Sarah was enraged. To meet the department’s requirements, she would have to spend another year at the college. But she thought about her experience in New York City, where she had met people from the French studies department at New York University; she researched that program, which combined skills in French and business, and realized she could use it as a model to design her own major. She put together her work in France with her studies in Spain, added courses in marketing and statistics to flesh out her degree plan, and dropped her French major. She needed an internship — and a lightbulb switched on when one of the peer mentors in the Center for Engaged Learning asked her, “Who sells South Carolina?” As it turned out, the South Carolina International Trade Association was heavily involved in luring businesses from France (and many other countries) to operate in the state and utilize the Port of Charleston. Sarah set up a research investigative inquiry with the CEO of the trade association, who quickly hired her because of her language certifications and experience to conduct market research. “I was the only person with a bachelor’s degree in the office,” Sarah says. “I learned that others on the team were from the Masters of International Business program at the University of South Carolina — everybody was from a different country, from Italy, Germany, Austria and China.” Eventually, Sarah felt a yearning to get back to Europe, particularly Barcelona. She set her sights on enrolling at ESADE, an internationally ranked business school in Barcelona, and started another series of research interviews to find a scholarship. She came across one offered by Rotary International. Having created a narrative about her journey through Field of Study, Sarah had everything she needed to tell her story to the Rotary board members — how she consciously linked French and Spanish to business and contemporary culture. Sarah was one of the awardees. She went off to ESADE, picked up Catalan and did an internship with a start-up company that sharpened her skills in business intelligence and market research. She graduated and used her skills to land a position with a Barcelona-based start-up called AirDNA in 2016. That same year, the French department at Columbia College closed, along with other departments with withering enrollments. The French department could have found myriad ways to boost its enrollment numbers, given that South Carolina is now host to more than 1,200 international companies employing more than 170,000 people. The French faculty could have worked with the career- services office to make connections with those companies and create partnerships with local high schools offering French, thereby showing students the inherent marketability of the language and setting up a pipeline into the college’s French program. French, after all, is consistently listed as one of the most useful business languages in the world, applicable not only in France but also in parts of Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. By showing how French could interact with the blank spaces present in almost any degree — without changing anything the French faculty were already doing in their courses — the department could have brought together the vocational and nonvocational to bridge the translation chasm and perhaps have fended off its demise. Part of Sarah’s success comes from her tenacity and her refusal to take no for an answer. Another part comes from how she consciously arranged her interests, passions, skills and her degree into a pattern that she and others could understand. “There really is a hidden job market for people who know how to just show up and say, ‘Hey, I have this skill set, and this is how I can be beneficial to you,’ ” she says. “If you’re good enough, they’ll make space for you. Don’t wait for somebody else to open an opportunity. Just go and open it yourself with what you want to go after and what your skill set is. And I do that every day. My job is made up.” Sarah DuPreINVESTMENT PROFILE: COUNTRY OF GEORGIA New Reports Salute Growth In Global Trade, Innovation And Business Friendliness In the Country of Georgia I n March, John Pearson, CEO of DHL Express, and Prof. Steven A. Altman of the NYU Stern School of Business (lead author of the DHL Trade Atlas), shared in-depth analysis of global trade and regional connectedness as part of their ongoing research that tracks countries by both speed and scale of trade growth. With a growth rate of 13%, the country of Georgia, their data predicts, will be No. 3 in the world over the next five years when measured by speed of global trade volume growth. After seeing 8% growth in trade volume (a $7.4 billion rise, good for a No. 16 ranking) between 2019 and 2024 fueled by such sectors as minerals, automotive, food & beverage and wine and by exports to neighboring countries as well as China and the United States, Georgia will see $19.1 billion worth of trade volume growth between 2024 and 2029, the Atlas projects. It’s a figure approaching the country’s total trade value of $23.6 billion in 2024. But it’s not an unexpected leap in a growing country. “Over the past four years we have had around a 10% growth rate,” says Mr. Mikheil Khidureli, CEO of Invest in Georgia. “We emerged very strong since 2021 and have maintained that trajectory. Exports, investment and tourism are all growing.” Entrepreneurs On the Rise So are startups. In the 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com 68 JULY 2025 SITE SELECTION A city of 1.2 million people, Tbilisi embodies Georgia’s spirit of innovation and connectivity. Photo: Getty Images SITE SELECTION JULY 2025 69 Report released in June by Startup Genome in partnership with the Global Entrepreneurship Network, Dealroom, Crunchbase, Pitchbook, Bella Private Markets and Tracxn, Avtandil Kasradze, chairman of Georgia’s Innovation and Technology Agency (GITA), said, “We’re transforming Georgia into a regional innovation hub through global partnerships, a % tax regime, strong infrastructure and accessible funding, off ering one of the region’s most startup-friendly environments.” GITA is launching four full-scale accelerators annually starting in , mentoring startups each year. Proposed tax incentives, says the report, include a -year tax break for innovative startups: % for the fi rst three years, % for the next three and % for the fi nal four. Incentives include % tax credits for innovative SMEs engaged in qualifi ed R&D and % cashback opportunities on R&D expenses. International IT companies benefi t from a % tax rate. e report’s analysis noted the following: “Georgia is rapidly emerging as the region’s leading innovation and startup ecosystem through improved infrastructure, expanded tech parks and strong engagement from local and international stakeholders. e country boasts a modern tech infrastructure with nine technology parks, including one in Tbilisi [a metro area with a population of . million]. A th tech hub is under development in Kutaisi and is set to become the largest in the country, strengthening the position of the Georgian ecosystem globally.” A new initiative, StartUP in Georgia, includes two pillars: international events and a digital one-stop-shop platform off ering key programs, news and opportunities. A dedicated StartUP in Georgia digital platform will launch soon, complementing such stakeholders as the angel network Axel, the Eurasia Accelerator (which has mentored startups since ) and the $ million Eurasia VC Fund. Moreover, this year Georgia is launching its fi rst International Innovation Hub in San Francisco, which will serve as a physical space connecting ecosystems, supporting startups and driving innovation, investment and global partnerships. Among the sectors driving entrepreneurial growth in Georgia is artifi cial intelligence. e Georgian government in launched GEORGIA Blue on this map indicates collective free trade agreements Georgia has with regions such as the EU, EFTA and CIS. Bilateral FTAs exist with countries in orange, including the UK, Turkey and China.70 JULY 2025 SITE SELECTION a National AI Strategy in order to drive AI adoption across sectors. The strategy includes the establishment of Excellence Centers to drive research innovation and commercialize R&D. Those centers will feature mission- critical infrastructure such as data centers in order to support advanced AI development. Other prominent sectors expected to see startup and innovation impact include biotech (driven by institutions like the 100-year-old Eliava Institute and its work in bacteriophage research) and agritech. IT is another prominent sector. The Startup Genome report said the country’s attractiveness is enhanced by such factors as STEM and ICT education, including the “Do IT in Georgia” initiative, which has trained up to 15,000 people. “According to Galt & Taggart’s May 2024 report, 11,122 students were enrolled in IT programs across 21 universities in 2023/24,” the ecosystem report stated, “reflecting a growing talent pool aligned with the needs of over 120 international IT companies operating in Georgia.” Khidureli says a new IT hub is in the works, with incentives to accompany it. The hub that is Georgia itself will be further enhanced by the Black Sea submarine cable project, a 1,155-kilometer-long underwater high-voltage transmission network that will connect the internet and electric power systems of Georgia and Europe. More Ready Than Ever Judging by the results of the new Business Ready (B-READY) report released in October 2024 by the World Bank, international companies will find their needs met better in Georgia than nearly anywhere on the planet. The report measures approximately 1,200 indicators per economy, addressing three pillars — regulatory framework, public services and operational efficiency — via 10 topics that include business location, labor, utility services, taxation and dispute resolution. The newly revamped report’s first installment covers 50 countries around the world, a total that co-author Norman Loayza, director of Chavchavadze Avenue in Tbilisi is named for renowned writer Ilia Chavchavadze. SITE SELECTION JULY 2025 71 This Investment Profile was produced under the auspices of Invest in Georgia, the economic development agency under the Georgia Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development. For more information, visit www.investingeorgia.org or email Info@enterprise.gov.ge. development economics in the World Bank’s Global Indicators Group, told me would increase to more than 180 economies by 2026. One aspect of B-READY worth noting: The report encompasses actual conditions, not theoretical ones. “The immediate goal of ‘Business Ready 2024’ is to enable countries to identify exactly where they have the greatest room to improve their business environment,” Loayza says. “Disaggregated scores on topics and pillars are good for this purpose.” Nevertheless, when Site Selection aggregated them anyway and averaged out the scores across the three pillars, Georgia finished at No. 3 among those 50 countries, just behind No. 1 Singapore and No. 2 Estonia, and ahead of such competitors as Hungary, Portugal, the Slovak Republic and Bulgaria. Hop around the spreadsheets to the business location rubric — which encompasses more than 130 sub-metrics from property transfer standards and land dispute mechanisms to environmental permitting and leasehold restrictions for foreign firms — and you’ll find the top score goes to Georgia, which from 2021 through 2024 has attracted $6.7 billion in foreign direct investment. Prefer to use the prism of taxation? Here, the sub-metrics range from clarity and transparency to VAT refunds, digital services for taxpayers and audit and dispute procedures. Sort by overall score and Georgia places No. 6 in the world, behind Hong Kong and Singapore but ahead of such top 10 locations as Mexico. Run through the B-READY metrics and pillars and Georgia’s results are promising in a number of areas: The country will showcase its global connectivity and business leadership when it hosts the fifth edition of the biennial Tbilisi Silk Road Forum October 22–23, 2025, under the theme “Invest in Connectivity — Grow in Stability.” The gathering will welcome over 2,000 delegates from more than 60 countries, including heads of state, senior government officials, ministers, business executives, international organization leaders and media representatives. “In an era of complex geopolitical shifts and economic transitions,” say event officials, “the Forum serves as a vital platform for dialogue and cooperation on enhancing regional and global connectivity.” (For more information, visit www.tbilisisrf.gov.ge.) Strategic Gateway Forum officials note how the country’s infrastructure will only become more instrumental: “Georgia is a pivotal player in the Middle Corridor, the Trans-Caspian International Transport Corridor that links East and West across the South Caucasus,” they state, noting that the Middle Corridor is one of the shortest and most reliable East– West transportation options. “Leveraging robust transport infrastructure, modern logistics networks, and extensive free trade agreements (including with the EU, China, Hong Kong, China, UK, Turkey, EFTA, UAE, CIS), Georgia serves as a strategic gateway for commerce between East and West. Ongoing infrastructure development projects — from port to railways and digital highways — further enhance this role. Georgia has invested significantly in modernizing infrastructure and fostering efficient trade routes.” That includes a new airport coming to Tbilisi that will triple capacity. Even if tariffs and retaliatory measures come into effect, global trade is projected to keep growing over the next five years, the DHL Trade Atlas report found. As John Pearson expressed it, “Do not underestimate the creativity of buyers and sellers wanting to do business with other people.” In Georgia, both the data and business leaders’ experience show that creativity and ease of doing business go hand in hand. PILLAR/METRIC GEORGIA’S RANK Operational Efficiency 2 (behind only Singapore) Regulatory Framework 3 Labor 3 Public Services 472 JULY 2025 SITE SELECTION I n the legendary musical “Hamilton,” the protagonist sings, “We studied and we fought and we killed for the notion of a nation we now get to build.” e new Hamilton Index of Advanced- Technology Performance, released in May by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), measures how well U.S. states are doing at building the economy of tomorrow through production in advanced industries. Here, with ITIF’s permission, we showcase some of the new report’s fi ndings with particular attention to the manufacturing components of the index. We also speak to report co-author and ITIF Founder and President Robert D. Atkinson about what his team’s fi ndings portend for companies wishing to invest in various regions of the United States. Washington, Virginia and Indiana Lead the Way e United States faces fi erce competition for global market share in traded-sector, advanced technology industries, wherein success directly impacts national economic strength and security. As China’s economy continues to grow and innovate — surpassing expectations from just a few years ago — the United States must look to expand its innovation and production capacity. If the United States wants to grow domestic production, the federal and state governments must coordinate a national industrial strategy in which U.S. states prioritize the development of industries that strengthen the national economy — not just their own. To assess the industrial performance of U.S. states and the District of Columbia, ITIF examined their share of U.S. output in seven industry sectors, which are aggregated into the Hamilton Index of Advanced- Technology Performance: information technology (IT) and information services; computer, electronic, and optical products; pharmaceuticals and biotechnology; electrical equipment; machinery and equipment; motor vehicles; and other transport equipment. e seven industries included in the Hamilton Index together accounted for million workers in the United States in . e IT and information services industry (including software and Internet services) is the largest of the , accounting for % of all employees in Hamilton Index industries. Using data from the Hamilton Index published in , America’s aggregate performance in advanced industries has been weak over the last two-plus decades, barring the IT and information services industry, which has seen growth due to leading U.S. fi rms such as Google, Meta, and Microsoft. by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com A NATION We Now Get to Build ADVANCED MANUFACTURING The State of Washington’s No. 1 rank in advanced technology economic performance is embodied across the 500 acres and more than 125 buildings at Microsoft’s global headquarters in Redmond. Photo courtesy of Microsoft SITE SELECTION JULY 2025 73 To assess states’ relative performance in strategically important industries, ITIF used an analytical statistic known as a location quotient (LQ), which measures any region’s level of industrial specialization relative to a larger geographic unit — in this case, a state relative to the United States as a whole. States with LQs at or above 1.00 are considered over-performing, while all LQs below 1.00 are considered underperforming. Nineteen states have LQs above 1.00, indicating that they are above the national average in the aggregate output in the 21 Hamilton subindustries analyzed. Washington state ranks first with an LQ of 1.79, driven by its diverse landscape of advanced technology companies, mainly in Seattle, including IT and aerospace firms. States focusing on high-tech industries, such as Virginia, California and Massachusetts, ranked second, fifth, and sixth, respectively. At the same time, manufacturing hubs such as Indiana, Michigan and Kansas were third, fourth and eighth overall, respectively. The composite rankings revealed both surprising and expected findings. Rural states such Oklahoma (0.66) and Wyoming (0.33) underperformed in the composite score, revealing the dependence on low-tech, agrarian, and service-based industries. At the same time, states with large urban centers, such as Texas (0.84), New York (0.73), and Florida (0.50), were below the national average. China’s industrial and innovative capabilities, in terms of LQ, significantly exceed the United States’. In this position, the United States has placed itself at risk in economic and national security, making itself vulnerable to weakened supply chains, trade manipulation and economic instability. Across-the-board tariffs on most countries and industries are not likely to do much to change this, in large part because most advanced industries rely on foreign markets for a considerable portion of sales, and aggressive U.S. trade protection will lead to an equal response from foreign nations, reducing many of these firms’ foreign sales. As such, to reclaim leadership in advanced industries, the United States must adopt a comprehensive, coordinated industrial strategy that aligns federal and state policies toward a common goal: strengthening domestic production in key sectors. The time for a piecemeal approach to industrial strategy has passed. Without decisive action, the United States risks falling further behind. By leveraging comparative advantages at the state level, fostering innovation clusters and committing to sustained investment in advanced industries, the United States can rebuild its industrial foundation and reassert itself as a dominant force in the global economy. A Q&A with Robert Atkinson How would you advise a multinational corporation or SME to use the Hamilton Index as a site selection tool? Robert Atkinson: The State Hamilton Index is a valuable tool for companies — both multinational corporations and SMEs — seeking to make informed site selection decisions. Its main purpose is to help firms assess the level of agglomeration economies for their particular industry across different U.S. states. In simple terms, it measures how concentrated an industry is in a given area. Agglomeration refers to the idea that the economic strengths of a region are greater than the sum of its parts. Companies benefit from being located in places like Silicon Valley COMPOSITE HAMILTON INDEX LQ Graph courtesy of ITIFNext >