In the 2009-2010 academic year, women accounted for nearly two-thirds of the 270,600 American students going overseas. Indeed, the proportion of men studying overseas has remained the same--or flatlined, to put it less charitably--for more than two decades. Sending a broader cross-section of majors abroad has not made a dent in the gender gap…

Some students at University of Florida can take classes only during the spring and summer semesters for as long as they are enrolled. Each year they will get a four-month break--the fall semester--when they can take online courses, study abroad, or do internships. Some may opt to work. Despite their schedules, the students are full-fledged…

For international educators, 2012 may well be remembered as the Year of Scrutiny, when perennial questions about overseas programs became more pointed. Missteps by some American colleges have led to a sharper focus on how they handle their recruitment of foreign students and their campuses abroad. Accreditors urge universities to be more watchful…

Renmin University of China's summer school, now in its fourth year, is one of the most ambitious efforts so far to meet China's goal of bringing half a million foreign students to its shores by 2020. To reach the bold target, the Ministry of Education is pouring money into colleges to establish programs friendly to Americans and other…

Dozens of universities have started encouraging students to go abroad early in their college life in the last decade, offering overseas opportunities that last a week to a full academic year, in countries as diverse as Britain, China, and Mexico. A variety of factors are driving the growth. Universities say the programs help globalize the…

Students in the University of Rhode Island's International Engineering Program (IEP) spend a semester studying at an overseas university and another six months interning at a company abroad; at the end of five years, they earn two degrees, in engineering and a foreign language. Despite the extra academic demands, nearly a third of Rhode Island's…

Eight years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and a few months after the withdrawal of the military forces from the country, Iraq's universities, devastated by years of dictatorship, sanctions, and war, are still struggling to recover. The security situation has improved since the deadly, dark days of 2006 and 2007, when the country teetered on the…

Global education has become a big business, as evidenced in the exhibit hall at the annual conference of Nafsa: Association of International Educators, where hundreds of vendors pitch a wide range of products and services. The world has become a kind of global classroom, with greater numbers of students flowing across borders each year. The number…

It is too early to predict enrollment numbers for international students in the United States this fall, but universities in Asia are already seeing big declines among South Koreans studying abroad. The value of South Korea's currency has dropped sharply in recent months, almost doubling the cost of living abroad for South Korean students and…

To demonstrate their credentials as global institutions, universities on both sides of the Atlantic are creating an increasing number of international joint-degree and dual-degree programs. But American institutions trail their European counterparts in offering such degrees, and American students are less likely than European students to…

The Chinese news media have a name for the craze that has gripped students here in the past few years: "overseas-study fever." And despite the worsening global financial crisis and a slowing domestic economy, it shows little sign of letting up. Recruiters say a high household savings rate, a difficult job market, and a steady currency,…

In a country where only 1 percent of college students can afford to study abroad, staking one's university's reputation on its international program might seem elitist. In a way, it is. But the University of Monterrey, where 40 percent of students participate in foreign-exchange programs, says that internationalization is also part of a broader…

At Canadian universities, business schools are light-years ahead of the rest of the campus in raising their global profile. Intensive foreign-student-recruitment efforts, friendly Canadian immigration rules, mandatory study-abroad requirements, and, in some cases, the option to pursue programs in multiple languages have combined to pack a punch in…

Indian universities had not historically done much to recruit foreign students, or to help the few that they had adjust to life in India. But in recent years, that has begun to change--if slowly. A handful of Indian institutions are making an effort to welcome international students to their campuses. And the government of Prime Minister Manmohan…

Every year American faculty members bring students to Africa to participate in study-abroad programs. Last December Joseph Akol Makeer, a Sudanese student at the author's institution, North Dakota State University, turned the tables and brought the author to his home village in Sudan, Duk Payuel, to see how they might help rebuild that war-torn…