Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Study abroad--where do our students go?

Just to give you a sense of where Puget Sound go on study abroad, here's the breakdown from last semester across campus. Some of the traditional programs seem less popular than past (Germany), those these appear to be replaced by other English-speaking countries in Asia (NZ, Australia). Lots of students going to China, a fair number to Africa (5) and Latin America (10). It's just one semester's worth of data, but interesting nevertheless. We see a very few students going to the Middle East (we have programs to Oman and Morocco), and one wonders whether that will increase in numbers. In general the largest share of students continue to go to places where English is widely spoken and the culture and standard of living similar to the US (read: Europe). At the same time, I suspect that where our students go is more diverse than twenty years ago. Are there important parts of the world our students are missing? Russia? Indonesia? Egypt? What do you think?

Greece
Japan
New Zealand 7
Spain 5
Australia 5
Switzerland
Netherlands 4
Brazil 4
Japan
Italy 6
India 2
Germany 3
France 5
Senegal
China 10
Madagascar
Denmark 3
Czech Republic 2
Austria 2
Argentina
UK 6
Ecuador 2
Mexico
Oman
Tanzania 3
Ireland 3
Costa Rica
Chile 2