Tide of U.S. Collegians Studying Abroad Swells

Education abroad--long a boutique experience for upper-middle-class students with a penchant for foreign languages--is rapidly expanding, bolstered by an increasing number of adventurers who take advantage of going abroad to explore their ethnic roots.

More American college students went overseas to study last year than ever before--a 14% increase. That marked the third straight year of double-digit growth, according to a survey released Monday by the Institute of International Education.

Several factors drive the trend: a search for ethnic heritage, a wider array of programs, a booming economy and strong dollar that make living overseas cheaper, and a growing international job market.

Students “increasingly view themselves as connected to the global economy,” said Allan E. Goodman, president of the institute.

The surging popularity draws students like UCLA senior Parag Ladhawala, who found that the management courses he took at Delhi University in India last year give him an edge in job interviews, especially for jobs overseas.

Besides learning Hindi, Ladhawala, whose family is of Indian descent, said prospective employers see that he has become much more resourceful and self-sufficient.

Thu Cao, a sociology major at UCLA, hopes to go to Vietnam next year to improve her chances of getting into a graduate education program.

Some Vietnamese parents who fled their native land after the communist victory there object when their children talk of going to Vietnam to study. Cao’s parents do not, although she notes that she wants to study in what she refers to as “Saigon” (now Ho Chi Minh City) and adds that she has no interest in “North Vietnam.”

Henry Kim, a senior at UC Irvine who recent returned from a semester at the University of Seoul, has delighted his parents by losing his American accent when he speaks Korean. “They said I sound like a native,” he said.

Far More Come Here to Study

Academic leaders continue to worry that the majority of American students--like their parents--remain too insular.

The 129,770 American students who got credit for studying abroad last year constitute a record number, but are still far fewer than the 514,723 international students who came to America, notes the American Council on Education, a higher education lobbying group.

The council released a pair of surveys on Monday that lamented the continuing decline of U.S. college students taking foreign languages. The number has dropped to 8% today, from 16% in the 1960s.

They also pointed out that nearly half of college freshmen said they plan to study abroad, but that fewer than 3% of America’s 14 million college students actually do so.

“Many of our institutions are doing wonderful work in this area,” said Stanley O. Ikenberry, council president. “But the overall level of international activity, for whatever reason, is disappointing.”

Still, new education-abroad programs seem to pop up every year. Stanford plans an expansion so that more than a third of its students will have some international experience before they graduate. USC has a master’s of business administration program that requires every student to spend a semester abroad.

The University of California, which sends 2,400 undergraduates abroad every year from eight UC campuses and hopes to double or triple the number by the end of the decade, is even counting on the trend as one way of handling campus overcrowding.

Expanding its Education Abroad Program is part of the university’s plan to handle a tidal wave of extra students headed its way as the children of baby boomers reach college age.

By shipping bodies overseas, “those students will not be using our parking lots, or living in the dorms or standing in line at the cafeteria,” said Jessica van der Valk, director of UCLA’s Education Abroad office.

John A. Marcum, systemwide director of the UC Education Abroad Program, said the university works hard to make sure that students can go overseas without missing a step toward completion of their degrees. Like other universities, UC has arranged for programs that extend beyond the traditional overseas courses in the social sciences, the arts and humanities.

So now, engineering majors can take engineering courses in Hong Kong or Chile, biology majors can study marine biology in Australia or tropical biology in Costa Rica. The result has helped fuel a 15% growth in the program every year. The next step is to arrange for students to go overseas during summers or semesters and take lower-division general education requirements.

All told, U.S. students can choose from 5,000 programs to study abroad, scattered around the globe. Some of the growth can be attributed to a proliferation of shorter-term programs, often limited to a summer or a semester. Some are of even shorter duration, a few weeks or even a month. Still, educators have also seen increases in students willing to commit to an academic year abroad.

Colleges and universities in England remain the top destination for U.S. students. Nearly 28,000 Americans enrolled in England last year--a record expected to be broken again this year.

“I didn’t want a language barrier,” said Lauren Harrelson, 20, and attending the University of Kent in Canterbury. She was ready for a new experience after growing up in San Clemente and then enrolling at UC San Diego, 45 minutes from home.

“I had to get out of the sun and the sand,” she said.

But while Europe continues to be the most popular region for overseas study, Americans increasingly are striking out for Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, where students can live in relative luxury on a meager budget.

“The place I was staying was $75 a month,” said Ladhawala, recalling his housing in India. Compare that to the $550 a month or more the UCLA senior has spent on an apartment in Westwood.

Curiosity About Ancestral Homelands

Study at non-European destinations is also driven by “heritage” students: Korean Americans who go to South Korea for a semester, Jewish students who go to Israel, even Vietnamese Americans who head to Hanoi--sometimes to the horror of their parents who fled Hanoi’s influence.

Gloria Duran, a senior at UC Irvine, went to Mexico City “to get in touch with my roots and improve my Spanish.”

Duran, who moved to East Los Angeles with her parents at age 2, spoke Spanish at home. Sort of. “Being raised here in the United States, you tend to speak more Spanglish,” she said. “Going back forced me to speak it the right way, improve my writing and my vocabulary.”

Israel experienced a 66% increase in students from America this past year compared with the year before, mostly Jewish Americans.

Jenny Bernstein of Los Angeles, for instance, said she signed up at Hebrew University and Bezalel Art Academy to soak up Israel’s cultural heritage and study archeology in the cradle of Western civilization.

Many programs there are now seeing their enrollments plunge as the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians continues.

Shlomo Gestetner, who runs a study program for religious students from the United States, finds himself fielding telephone calls from anxious parents who want to cancel their children’s plans or summon them home.

“Ultimately, it’s up to the parents and students,” he said. “We don’t encourage them to stay or to leave.”

Jacob Cunningham of Ventura, on a Steven Spielberg internship to study history and film, has stuck it out despite the worries of his parents.

“It’s not that I enjoy violence,” Cunningham said. “But I’m bored with the general apathy in the U.S. and in the American culture. Here, people believe in things to the point of going crazy.” He finds it all “very invigorating.”

European Americans also gravitate to their ancestral homelands.

Patryk Kupiszewski, 20, is one of a dozen Americans studying at the Polonia Institute of Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Nearly all of them have a Polish mother or father or some other family connection.

He wanted a firsthand experience living in the country of his birth. He immigrated at age 8 to Chicago, a place where everyone in the Polish American community has strong opinions on their native land. “I wanted to have my own opinion,” he said.

Tia Marie Shearer, attending New York University’s campus in Florence, studies theatrical philosophies and is nearly giddy about just being in Italy.

“Half my family is Italian, so it’s always been sort of the motherland,” she said. “And I really love fresh mozzarella!”

Shearer said her Catholic upbringing also influenced her decision to study in Italy. “I went to a Mass with the pope,” she said. “That’s every Catholic’s dream.”

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Weiss reported from Los Angeles, Miller from London. Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Rome and David Holley in Warsaw and researcher Efrat Shvily in Jerusalem contributed to this story.

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Studying Abroad

The number of U.S. college students venturing overseas to study grew almost 14% last year to 129,770. The reasons include a robust American economy, a strong dollar, and increasing student interest in preparing for a global economy.

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Source: Institute of International Education, New York