- Research from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities indicates that 64.5% of students who study abroad receive their undergraduate degree in four years—a 13.5% advantage over students who do not study abroad.
- Graduation rates for students who study abroad and take five years to graduate are higher at both UMTC and the University of California at San Diego, where study abroad participants have a 92% chance of graduating in five years.
- The results do not necessarily indication causation, but Inside Higher Ed spoke with several experts who pointed out that the correlation alone can be worth analyzing.
From the article:
Many of the efforts to quantify study abroad’s impact focus on international learning outcomes: intercultural competency, “global-mindedness,” or foreign language acquisition. Increasingly, international educators are researching the link between study abroad and retention and graduation rates, busting the myth that study abroad delays time to graduation and raising questions about whether it can be used as a strategy to increase rates of student persistence and success. ...