Study-Abroad Numbers Continue to Climb, Trips Are Shorter, Report Says

The numbers of U.S. students traveling abroad to study continued to grow in 2005, increasing 8.5 percent over the previous year, with much of the expansion taking place in such nontraditional destinations as China, Ecuador, and Argentina.

According to the Institute of International Education, which tracks the figures in its annual “Open Doors” report, Western Europe remained the most popular destination for students enrolled in American colleges. The top four choices were Britain, Italy, Spain, and France, drawing 95,670 of the 223,534 students who spent time abroad. Those countries’ numbers grew modestly from a year earlier, however, while the number of students going to China rose by 38 percent and to Argentina by 42 percent.

Trips of eight weeks or less also continued to rise in popularity, taken by 9.5 percent of students who studied abroad, up from 8 percent a year earlier. Only 5.3 percent of students spent an entire academic year away from their campuses. Thirty-seven percent chose a summer term abroad, and nearly 37 percent left for a semester.

The trend toward shorter trips is driven by a broad desire among educators to see more students spend at least a portion of their college careers outside the United States. Educators are troubled by the fact that even as the number of study-abroad students has risen steadily, the percentage of all college students who go abroad remains very low.

The number of students in groups that have historically tended not to study abroad — in part because of difficulty in finding the resources or time — has also remained stagnant. They include Hispanic students, black students, and those studying science, mathematics, and engineering. To make it easier for those hard-to-reach students, colleges are fashioning trips that can be taken during winter or summer breaks. Such shorter trips also place a smaller financial burden on students.

Meaningful Experience

Colleges are also involving faculty members more heavily in program design, to ensure that time abroad is not seen by students or their professors as a pause in their academic careers.

The University of Kansas has gone that route, with success. This year it is running 60 short-term faculty-led programs, up from 42 last year. From three to nine weeks long, the programs allow students to travel to India, Peru, South Africa, Tanzania, and Turkey, among other destinations.

Susan L. Gronbeck-Tedesco, director of the university’s study-abroad office, said 64 percent of the roughly 1,400 students per year at Kansas who go abroad participate in those shorter trips. The programs are integral to the university’s goal of increasing study-abroad participation to 40 percent of all undergraduates, up from 26 percent today, she said. Kansas has seen the number of students going abroad climb 9 percent to 10 percent annually in recent years.

“I really think this is the first step into longer-term study abroad,” Ms. Gronbeck-Tedesco said. “I think the wave of the future includes many departments developing options for a major where students can spend a semester studying at a foreign institution.”

Educators also say students are more interested in service learning, which may be driving the push into developing countries.

Adam Weinberg, provost of the School for International Training, a Vermont-based nonprofit group that offers study-abroad programs focused on development, culture, and social change, said it had seen its enrollment grow 20 percent a year for the past four to five years. About 2,000 students participate each year in trips that typically include home stays, language immersion, and independent research.

Students and colleges are clamoring for such academically and culturally intense experiences, he said: “There are days when we can’t develop programs quickly enough to meet the demand.”

http://chronicle.com Section: International Volume 54, Issue 12, Page A36