Benefits of Study Abroad

“Rich students ‘five times more likely to study abroad’”

by Chris Havergal via “TIME’s Higher Education“

Undergraduates from the most affluent families are up to five times more likely to go abroad as part of their degree than less privileged students, a new study says.

Around one in 13 undergraduates (7.9 per cent) who graduated in 2013-14 and were from higher managerial and professional backgrounds went overseas to study, work or volunteer during their course, according to analysis of the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey, compared with just 1.6 per cent of those whose parents were long-term unemployed.

The UK Higher Education International Unit, which conducted the research, found that the aggregated mobility rate for students from more disadvantaged backgrounds was 3.4 per cent, compared with the overall mean of 5.4 per cent.

There were also significant differences in participation by gender and by ethnicity. Female students were two and a half times more likely to go abroad than their male counterparts, and white undergraduates were around twice as likely to go abroad as their black and Asian peers.

These differences largely disappeared when language students, who account for 38 per cent of all international trips, were discounted.

However, the under-representation of students from less privileged backgrounds, and of black men, was unaffected.

The International Unit said the findings were concerning because, according to its analysis, students from disadvantaged backgrounds were among those who stood to gain the most from going abroad.

Five per cent of students from disadvantaged families who had an international experience were unemployed six months after graduation, compared with 6.2 per cent of less privileged students who did not go overseas, DLHE returns show.

“Can study abroad lead to an ‘enlightened form of nationalism’?”

**by Ellie Bothwell via “THE“**

Higher graduate earnings, better marks and a greater understanding of students from different nations and backgrounds.

The benefits of study-abroad programmes have long been cited, so I was surprised to discover the results of a recent study, which found that students that spent time studying abroad were no more likely to have a feeling of “shared international community” compared with those who had enrolled on a programme but had not yet departed.

In fact, according to the survey of 571 US study-abroad students, those who had already been overseas said that they felt they had significantly fewer values in common with the people in their host country.

However, despite seeming to challenge the theory that overseas study helps improve international relations, the research from Calvert Jones, assistant professor of political science at the University of Maryland, provides a reassuring conclusion.

Professor Jones argues that while students returning from studying abroad are more “nationalistic”, they are also more tolerant and less prone to viewing other countries as threatening. She says that this means theorists of international community “would be right about the main effect, but wrong about the mechanism”. . . . .