Education and United Nations

By Kevin Kester

For over five years I taught university peace studies and international relations at many top-tier universities in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Korea and the United Nations. The students of these institutions were often inspired, driven to succeed and hardworking. Many of them had a dream of one day working for a non-governmental organization, multi-national corporation, or international agency, especially the United Nations (UN).

Students would often ask me the pragmatic question of what they needed to learn and which life experiences they should acquire to work inside the U.N. Like those students I know there are many others in Korea who would be interested in the response. I provide it here by way of findings from a small-scale yet comprehensive experiment using more than 1,000 curriculum vitaes (CVs) of U.N. officials.

In order to better understand the knowledge economy dominating the U.N., I mapped and analyzed the educational qualifications and social networks of professionals working in 15 different U.N. agencies. I collected the more than 1,000 U.N. CVs from those publically accessible on the social networking site LinkedIn. Then, using two indicators of skill and prestige ― educational qualifications and social networks ― I analyzed the CVs.

First, I examined the higher education qualifications and training certificates written on the documents for level and subject of study. Second, I mapped the social networks by noting the institutions and peoples with whom the officials were associated. CVs were examined for those working in the U.N. Headquarters in New York, the United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), U.N. Women, U.N.-Habitat, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO), World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), UNU (United Nations University) and the University for Peace (UPEACE). This thorough review was conducted to avoid idiosyncrasies with any particular program.

What I learned from the review is that almost all U.N. officials have a bachelor's degree and many have a master's degree. There are few without university education and even fewer with a Ph.D. In addition, while there are some universities that stick out, it should first be noted that the brand name of the institution does not seem to matter for employment. Many officials are educated at institutions hardly recognizable beyond their locale. The seven universities that are most prevalent in the study, however, include Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Columbia, NYU, LSE and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Universities of the United Nations also emerged in the analysis but they did not dominate.

Concerning the university major subject, there seems to be a distinctive preference among all U.N. programs included in the study for training in political science, business, development or law. Other popular programs include human rights, economics, STEM degrees and communications. The specific breakdown is as follows: political science/international relations (in percentage: 36), international business/management (17), development (17), human rights and law (13), economics (11), STEM (11), communications (9), environmental studies (7), sociology/gender (7), English/languages (6), peace studies (6), global/area studies (5), education (4), war studies (4), history (3), health/medicine (2), psychology (2), and philosophy (1). As might be expected, specific technical agencies favored certain qualifications. For example, the analysis revealed that the ILO and IMF seem to favor economists, U.N. Women privileges gender studies and literature, the World Bank and UNDP choose development majors, U.N.-Habitat favors training in architecture/design, and UNITAR hires sociologists. Of course, the agencies may change their priorities over time but this is where it seems to stand in 2014.

Pertaining to social networks, more than 33 percent of the officials had a social network of the highest sort on LinkedIn (500+ connections), while the other two-thirds had an average or less than average network. In summary, the education of U.N. officials is broad and interdisciplinary, but there are some trends that emerge in a macro-analysis of CVs. A university qualification is almost certainly necessary for those working in agency headquarters, though degrees may not be required for fieldwork; training in international relations, business, development or law seems to be the priority of the world body; and this training can come from any institution, though a few select universities do seem to reign. Finally, although students might consider matriculating at any of these seven institutions ― or other similar programs ― if they have an interest in working with the world body, they should carefully research the disparate agencies of the U.N. system and choose wisely the programs that match their own intellectual and moral values.

Kevin Kester is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge. He is currently a visiting scholar at National Taiwan University and was previously a visiting researcher at Seoul National University's Graduate School of International Studies.