Why more students are studying abroad

As college students prepare for a fresh academic year, and the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, one thing some pundits had predicted is not happening: Young people are not responding to the attacks - or to America's faltering image abroad - by turning their back to the world.

Instead, young adults are traveling, studying, and volunteering overseas in growing numbers. This steadily rising stream among the T-shirt set reflects national surveys showing that Americans in general shun an isolationist and "go it alone" approach to the world.

The rise in study abroad follows some dips in such pursuits after the terror attacks - and then what some colleges reported as a reluctance by some students to commit to going overseas amid the uncertainties swirling around an Iraq war.

Now, study abroad is expected to rise slightly this year, sustaining a five-year trend that has seen the numbers of American youths making an overseas experience some part of their academic years jump by 55 percent since 1997, according to the Institute for International Education in New York.

"Right now it looks like we could have a slight increase," says Heykyung Koh, a research officer at IIE, which compiles statistics on students abroad submitted by US colleges. "Sept. 11 convinced people there's a world out there that we need to understand better, and that has translated into increased interest in studying abroad."

The IIE will publish its annual survey in November, but already some major universities report significant increases in students going abroad - even after the years of growth and an uncertain economy. Michigan State University, which topped last year's IIE survey, expects about a 7 percent rise in students going abroad. Another top spot for study abroad, the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, forecasts about a 4 percent rise.

For some students, the motivation is still just to have fun, to "see the world," or to flee the strictures of home and the paper chase, if only for a semester. But for a substantial number, the new focus is to add some international spice to the résumé in a competitive and global job environment.

And for what may be a small but growing number, part of the impetus is a desire to take overseas a different America from the one that, if global surveys are accurate, a large swath of the world increasingly distrusts and even disdains.

"When I first went to London, the big motivation for me was just to have the ability to live overseas, and to get a different perspective on the world and America," says Elizabeth Feltes, a College of William and Mary graduate now at home in Denver, finishing a master's dissertation from the University of London.

"But after Sept. 11 and especially as it became clear we were going to take some kind of action in Iraq, I had a heightened sense of being a representative of America. I realized," she adds, "that we are such important players internationally that we can't afford to isolate ourselves from the world anymore."

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