About UCEA

The Changing Study Abroad Experience

Kay Kohl, UCEA Executive Director and CEO
UCEA InFocus, April 2008 (PDF)

Many study abroad programs will need to change to respond to the expectations of the incoming generation of college students. A majority of college-bound students already holds a passport and has traveled abroad. Seventy percent of incoming students plan to become proficient in a second language. A large number also aspire to work abroad.  Moreover today’s college students belong to a digital generation, one that lives in the web and for whom interacting globally, if only virtually, has long been a given.

Increased Interest

Interest in study abroad programs among American students has been climbing since 2001, notwithstanding terrorism, conflicts in the Middle East, and the sagging value of the U.S. dollar. Still, study abroad student numbers remain relatively small.  According to the International Institute for Education’s most recent Open Doors report, 223,543 American college students studied abroad in 2005-2006, an increase of 8.5 percent. The programs attracting the most study abroad college students were short-term credit programs of less than eight weeks, typically offered in the summer or during January term.

Clearly, longer term study abroad programs offer better opportunities for foreign language acquisition.  With increasing globalization, employers and the U.S. government have a vested interest in expanding Americans’ proficiency in foreign languages.  A significant number of current college students already are fluent in a foreign language because they have grown up with immigrant parents. Twenty-six percent of today’s college students speak a language other than English at home and 31 percent have an immediate family member who moved to the United States from another country.

Diverse Destinations

Many students are interested in study abroad opportunities beyond Europe. And that interest in diverse destinations is reflected in their choices. Relative to the previous year, the number of 2005-2006 study abroad students going to the Middle East rose 31 percent; the number of students going to Asia was up 26 percent; the number to Africa, up 19 percent; and the number to Latin America, up 14 percent.

The Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act of 2007, currently being considered by the Congress, seeks to diversify both the study abroad student population and their destinations. The legislation would authorize $80 million for grants to individual students, colleges and universities and nongovernmental institutions that provide study abroad opportunities. It aims to increase the number of students studying abroad, more than quadrupling participation to one million within 10 years’ time.

Developing Programs

According to UCEA’s 2007 Management Survey, some 26 percent of public university continuing education organizations and 12 percent of private university continuing education organizations administer study abroad programs. If the Simon Foundation legislation is approved by the 110th Congress, significant new resources would become available for scholarships and to support the diversification of study abroad destinations. To organize and manage quality credit study abroad programs in unfamiliar regions of the world is a major undertaking, however. Those CE organizations that aspire to do so would be well advised to begin forging relationships with prospective international partners, identifying qualified faculty, and making exploratory visits to possible destinations well in advance.

The 9/11 Commission recommended the United States increase support for scholarship and exchange programs. Given that most of the world’s population growth will take place outside of the United States and Europe over the next 50 years, offering American undergraduates the opportunity to exchange ideas and forge friendships with students in very different societies is viewed by the bi-partisan supporters of the Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act as a way not only to open the minds of young people but also to strengthen the United States.