How Study Abroad Can Benefit College Students

International education opportunities expose college students to foreign cultures, language immersion and interaction with diverse communities around the world, which can lead to increased self-awareness, improved critical thinking and even work opportunities, experts say.

Due largely to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of U.S. college students studying abroad plummeted nearly 96% from the all-time high of 347,099 in 2018-2019 to 14,549 in 2020-2021, according to the 2022 “Open Doors U.S. Study Abroad” annual survey by the Institute of International Education, a not-for-profit global organization founded in 1919.

The most recent data is still inconclusive, but the institute reports that 96% of responding college administrators in a different recent survey predict that their international programs will grow or stabilize in 2023-2024. Along those lines, conversations about the many benefits of studying abroad are echoing across U.S. campuses once again, experts say.

“We live and work in a globalized world. We are so interconnected, whether virtually or through physical contact,” says Lindsay Calvert, director of the Center for Access and Equity at IIE. “And it is ever more important for students to have these experiences, so they are able to work with and among different cultures.”

Nick Gozik, dean of global education at Elon University in North Carolina, is emphatic about the utility of study abroad.

“It is difficult to imagine that a college graduate will not need the skills gained through study abroad and other global experiences,” he wrote in an email. “Whether it is a doctor who treats patients originating from other countries, a teacher with students from underrepresented backgrounds, or a scientist working in a multinational, it is increasingly necessary for graduates to be able to navigate difference and work with people from other cultures and backgrounds.” 

Students can develop various personal, interpersonal and cognitive skills by studying abroad, studies indicate, including adaptability, self-awareness, tolerance for ambiguity, teamwork, leadership, work ethic, and problem-solving and intercultural skills.

In an IIE research study involving 4,500 college alumni who studied abroad between the 1999-2000 and 2016-2017 academic years, about 90% of respondents said their overseas experience cultivated these qualities in them. The benefits generally increased with the length of the study period, from a short term of a few weeks to one semester to a year.

Asked if their study abroad contributed to a job offer at some point, 67.5% of respondents who participated in a full academic year of the experience said yes, compared to 53.4% of those who studied overseas for roughly a semester and 42.5% of those who did so for fewer than eight weeks.

Students in study abroad programs often mix their desire for an adventure with foreign language acquisition, academic pursuits, short-term work opportunities such as internships, career building or a combination.

Sera Park, who is earning an art history degree at Temple University in Pennsylvania, went to the university’s Rome campus in spring 2021, during the pandemic.

“It was my dream to study in Italy,” she says. “My mom is an artist and I grew up around that but didn’t know what I wanted to do with my degree.”

Park worked as an intern on an art preservation project with a local art conservator recommended by her professor.

“As I continued my internship,” she says, “I realized this field (art conservation) was what I wanted to pursue in my future.”

Upon learning that studying chemistry was essential to becoming an art conservator, Park decided to add a chemistry minor to her degree. She plans to go to graduate school to complete her training as a conservator. Knowledge of chemistry is required in some graduate art programs in the U.S.

Study abroad also exposed Park to many opportunities for travel, she says. “As I was traveling, it helped me appreciate cultural heritage and art more, and why it is important to preserve it.”

Among the most tangible ways that students are leveraging their study abroad experiences is in their job searches. Experts and students say that when searching for employment straight out of college and lacking significant employment history, one’s broader life experiences may count more.

Having been in a foreign environment gives job applicants a broader scope for a narrative about how their background and experiences have built their character, experts say.

Moriah Baxevane-Connell, who studied at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom for six months during college, says she highlighted her time abroad in her job resume.

“Looking for my first job out of college, study abroad helped me show that I had the curiosity and the willingness to explore new things and that I was open-minded,” she says.

So, when an interviewer asked, “Can you thrive in this new environment?” she was prepared with a response: “I said, ’Yeah sure, absolutely. I flew 4,000 miles away from everyone that I know and spent six months and I had a great time.’”

Baxevane-Connell worked for a tech firm in the U.S. for several years before going back to the U.K. to earn an MBA at the University of Oxford. She now works as a strategy and operations manager for Google in London.

The pandemic taught additional lessons about the value of studying abroad, says Samantha Brandauer, associate provost and executive director of the Center for Global Study and Engagement at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. Those lessons include “your ability to understand and tolerate ambiguity that comes from cross-cultural experiences and to sit with the ‘I don’t know,’” she says. “That is a valuable skill in your working environment, your ability to sit with the unknown that often comes with significant cross-cultural experiences.”

At Dickinson, about 65% of the 2,200 students study abroad at some point during their time at the college, Brandauer says.

Employers may have more favorable views of young job seekers with international experience, some research suggests. QS Global Employer Survey Report found in 2016 that six out of 10 employers around the world give extra credit for job applicants with study abroad on their resumes, and more than 80% said they actively seek graduates with overseas study experiences. 

Multiple factors deter U.S. students from studying abroad, such as financial concerns, fear of missing out on something at home, health challenges and being far away from family and friends, experts say.

“It is the combination of the expenses and just not knowing what it is,” says Baxevane-Connell. “And the fear that, ‘I really need to finish my degree in four years, so I can get a job and start paying back my loan and so I can start living my life.’”

Female students are more likely to study abroad than male students, says Brandauer. “For decades, it has been 60-40” in favor of women, she says, and that’s been the national trend.

Brandauer suspects that male students have “a harder time finding their social niche on a college campus, and once they identify with a group, then it is hard to leave that group,” she says. “There is a lot of comfort being male on campus.”

Students who are historically underrepresented in U.S. colleges, such as students with disabilities and some racial minorities, tend to also be underrepresented in study abroad participation, according to the 2023 IIE study. That study report also notes that many colleges have been making efforts to improve the access and experience for underrepresented students by offering scholarships, boosting advising and providing special information sessions.

In the 2020-2021 academic year, according to data from NAFSA: Association of International Educators, Black students were 13.1% of U.S. postsecondary enrollment but just 4.1% of U.S. students studying abroad, while Hispanic and Latino students were 20.3% of postsecondary enrollment and only 12.3% of U.S. students who studied overseas. At the same time, White, Asian/Pacific Islander and multiracial students were proportionally overrepresented.