A study of more than 7,000 US and UK students has revealed a high proportion of students who say they are not interested in study abroad would like to live or work overseas.
The British Council’s Broadening Horizons report, which will be launched at the Going Global event next week, highlights opportunities for educators to show students the benefits of studying abroad.
The report has also found a greater interest in study abroad among US students than their UK counterparts.
“By providing information on the benefits and skills to be gained, there is great potential to convert that travel aspiration into a desire to study overseas”
Over half of the 4,625 US students surveyed for the report expressed interest in studying abroad, compared with just over a third of the 2,856 UK students surveyed, with the opportunity for adventure and travel shown to be a greater motivator than career enhancement.
However, almost two thirds of those who were undecided or had no interest in study abroad said that they did want to travel or live abroad.
“Our research shows that a significant number of students in the UK and the US aspire to travel abroad, experience new cultures and gain a global outlook,” noted the report’s author, Education Intelligence research director, Zainab Malik.
“By providing information on the benefits and skills to be gained, there is great potential to convert that travel aspiration into a desire to study overseas.”
With costs, personal well-being and a lack of language skills the main perceived deterrents to study abroad among both groups, Malik told The PIE News that in order to make this conversion, educators need to focus on addressing these concerns.
“You need to mitigate the barriers,” she said. “You need to talk to them about what their options are, what the funding options are.”
“The other thing you need to do is give them further information about the benefits of study abroad,” she added. “It’s about building international networks for your future; it’s about employability; it’s about academic stimulation outside your box.”
The report found that students who lacked interest in study abroad in both countries would most be incentivised to change their minds if they were given help with funding and foreign language training.
“You need to mitigate the barriers and talk to students about what their options are, what the funding options are”
And, although the survey does not answer why there is a discrepancy in the level of interest in study abroad between US and UK students, providing access to information about study abroad and funding could also be key to closing this gap, Malik suggested.
As well as the overall difference, interest in studying abroad at the undergraduate level was also higher among US students, 61% of whom said they would like to engage in overseas study, compared with 50% of UK students.
Significantly, the survey also found that US students had a higher degree of satisfaction with the information they were able to access, and relied on a diversity of sources to a greater degree.
And in terms of funding opportunities, 63% of US respondents who had already studied abroad knew about government-sponsored programmes for overseas study, compared with just 35% of UK respondents.
Another factor that could contribute to the lower proportion of UK students interested in studying overseas is the “long-running perception that it can be hard to fit a study abroad experience into a UK course”, Malik added.
“There are perceptions of rigity, which are not true necessarily, whereas in the US there’s been a much longer history of studying abroad in your junior year, so there’s more of an embedded culture at many universities in the US for study abroad,” she said.
