Explore different countries. Experience new cultures. Enrich — and maybe even accelerate — your education. Every year, American college students do just that when they study abroad.
The places they travel to span the globe — on every continent, even Antarctica — and are detailed annually in “Open Doors,” a report, issued by the Institute of International Education and the U.S. Department of State, that provides insight into international enrollment and study-abroad trends.
To learn more about where students go and don’t go, The Chronicle analyzed Open Doors data on study-abroad destinations for more than 5.3 million American students from 2000-1 through 2021-22. Here are four takeaways:
Britain, Italy, and Spain are perennial favorites.
Britain was the leading destination for American study-abroad students from 2000-1 until 2019-20, when Spain rose to the top spot. Since then, Italy — a second-place stalwart — has taken the lead, and in 2021-22 more than 30,000 students studied abroad there. That’s about 16 percent of the 188,753 students who participated in study-abroad programs that year.
Study abroad in China has taken a hit.
American students studying abroad in China peaked at nearly 15,000 in 2011-12. But nearly every year since, that number has dropped. In 2018-19, before the pandemic began, it was at more than 11,000. By 2021-22, that number had slid to 211. Federal-government restrictions and geopolitical tensions were mostly to blame.
Learning, for some students, took place on the frozen continent.
The number of students who opted to study abroad in Antarctica never hit three digits in any year from 2000-1 to 2021-22. But after uneven growth through most of that period, it saw a high of 87 students in 2015-16 — more than Bulgaria, Martinique, Zimbabwe, and 131 other countries that year. The total number of such students in Antarctica during the 22 years in the analysis: 815.
More than 100 countries hosted at least one American study-abroad student every year.
The leading destinations were, of course, among this group from 2000-1 to 2021-22. But also included were places like Barbados, Kenya, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Turkey.
