Hard to believe, but it’s true: Only 1% of students from the US study abroad each year.
Is it that American students aren’t interested in studying abroad or that they encounter too many obstacles–including financial challenges–that prevent them from doing so?
Whatever the reason, US Congress took a big step toward improving study abroad opportunities for American students yesterday when it introduced the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act as part of the House Foreign Relations Authorization Act.
The purpose of the act is to establish public-private partnerships that will achieve four broad goals:
1. Increase American students’ participation in quality study abroad programs;
2. Encourage diversity in student participation in study abroad;
3. Diversify study abroad sites, especially in developing countries;
4. Make study abroad an integral part of the American higher education experience.
The bill was actually introduced last year and enjoyed bipartisan support in the House and Senate, but the Congressional session expired before the bill could be passed.
Full information about the bill can be found here.
If you’d like to support the bill, you can join the Movement for Study Abroad on Facebook.
Community Connection:
Do you know about Matador’s study and live abroad blog, Matador Abroad? Whether you live in the US or elsewhere, you can find a rich archive of articles on study abroad subjects there!
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15 Comments... join the discussion!
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I agree that there are a lot of changes needed in all levels of America’s education system, but why not make study-abroad promotion one of them? The figure that’s the basis for this article is kind of appalling. I would have guessed 15-20%.
ps julie – i had no trouble with the title
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I don’t find the stats surprising at all, but very disappointing! Studying abroad was one of the best things that I have ever done and now I look to teach abroad. I think we would have less international conflicts if we all spent more time visiting other countries and learning other cultures, languages, traditions and histories. I support this bill!
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Correct me if I’m wrong but, admittedly while not as shockingly low, isn’t the number of Americans with passports also very low? Could be correlated?
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Good points, everyone! And Troy, yes, the number of Americans with passports is quite low.
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I wonder what the percentage is for Canadians…when I finished highschool I don’t remember even hearing about this as an option, so it’s definitely something that needs to be promoted more. Of course, that was quite some time ago now, maybe things are different?
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I’m not sure how unusual my undergrad (Dal) was among Canadian schools, but study abroad was pretty common there. I had friends who went everywhere from Senegal to Cuba to New Zealand to Malta, Malaysia, Swaziland, and on and on.
There’s a big “but” coming though: there were extra costs associated with a semester or a year of study abroad, and an academic price to pay too — a full year of study abroad usually meant extending your degree to five years, because most often your study abroad credits were useless as far as prereqs for your specific program went. A one semester study abroad was tricky too because it made it impossible to take any year-long prereqs that year. So, to put it delicately, the kids that went on study abroad often a) didn’t have student loans to worry about, and b) weren’t necessarily too concerned about their academics. (The exception was the international development crowd.)
The long lead-up, planning-wise, hampers things too. For myself, I didn’t make plans (late in first year or early second year) to go abroad in third year because I was a classics major and my full-year language prereqs (Greek and Latin) wouldn’t allow it. But by the time third year rolled around, I’d switched to African History. So a study abroad experience in Africa would have been ideal…
It’s certainly an imperfect system! It’s encouraging to hear it’s being taken seriously now in the US.
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I wish I could have studied abroad while in school. I’m still in school right now, but I only have one semester left, and finances are too tight to try it out. Too bad this wasn’t done sooner. I definitely would have taken the opportunity.
But who knows. I may end up going to graduate school, so the opportunity may just come my way.
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Great news – study abroad is such a powerful educational experience for high-school and college students.
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The statistics that we’ve found pubilshed are that 55% of US college students polled say that they are interested in and at some point would like to study abroad. And only 5% of those US college students do end up studying abroad. Multiply the two and this comes out to 2.75% of all students.
The main reasons most don’t go, as has been stated, is funding. Some people actually decide to skip studying abroad and instead go traveling abroad for several months after graduation, which can be a low cost alternative……
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I was really surprised to see a photo of my old university while reading articles on this amazing , richly informative site. and coincidentally i also feel strongly about this topic. most american students these days are content to stay in the bubble of comfort and relative safety and consumerism of the united states. study abroad is a great opportunity for students to learn more about the world, learn a different language , and even to work abroad. i wish i would have done it
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I’m not surprised: I’m the only one of my close friends from college who studied abroad, and probably because I’m the only one studying a language. Additionally, my best friend applied, and was accepted, to study abroad in Greece but turned it down because of financial reasons. I’m glad the government is pushing for this.
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Im confused by these numbers. I’m an American who hasn’t studied abroad but I’ve been to some 25 countries in my life. Is this 1% of college students at a 4 year University? My University was well above 50% of students studying abroad, the reasons for the other 50% I can’t be for certain but I can say one thing, its VERY hard to study abroad.
If your tuition is 20k a year and you go to school in Ethiopia which costs 500 dollars for the year, the University expects you to pay the full tuition. If not, good luck getting your credits transfered. I experienced this with just transferring summer credits, it was damn near impossible.
The US govt getting involved means there will just be more red tape and less programs that you can actually apply to (and get credit to.) They should force the Universities to stop running as a business and do whats best for the students instead. That would be real change.
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I’m sorry but I don’t buy the finances argument. In many places (eg: Canada, Australia and New Zealand) university fees are much less than in the states, and credits will transfer. Who says you have to do a structured exchange?
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well…. being an American student who just returned from studying abroad in Australia, I can tell you that FINANCES are pretty much the driving factor in whether or not one studies abroad. Granted there are a lot of people who just flat out do not want to leave, most that do simply can’t afford it. I had to take a loan out that I’ll be paying back for a decade, but my experiences far outweigh the cost of the program!
Also, a lot of people are brainwashed into the “go to school for exactly four years, get a degree, get a job” mentality. Although I think it is bullshit, many engineering and education majors, among others, can’t go because it will screw up their graduation timeline and class schedules. Why don’t they just go somewhere, and graduate a semester late!?
And btw, the passport thing is not correlated, the only reason the majority of the people leave the country before going to Uni is for a vacation, and if your family can’t afford an out of the country vacation, chances are you can’t afford to study abroad either.. meaning you probably wouldn’t have a passport. thats my opinion at least..
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