Student Guide to Studying, Volunteering, and Working Overseas

It’s Transitions Abroad’s 30th anniversary and it’s The Year of Study Abroad. We have so many reasons to celebrate!

The shared timing of these two milestones is especially fitting, since Dr. Clay A. Hubbs founded Transitions Abroad in 1977 to spread the word about educational opportunities abroad. “Formal education programs would be at the center of it—after all, I was a college teacher and it was primarily for students that my colleagues and I started the publication,” he wrote. “We would, however, cover all the opportunities for international education, including work and travel and, of course, living or immersion in another culture.”

Clay had observed, from his experience as a study abroad adviser at Hampshire College, that students “were more open to learning after having encountered cultural values and ways of life different from those they had hitherto taken for granted.”

Since those early days when Transitions Abroad was one of few resources dedicated to education abroad, times have changed and now there is much greater support for the internationalization of higher education. Increasingly, colleges and universities are internationalizing their curriculums, and more students than ever are pursuing opportunities to learn overseas. The Institute of International Education’s (IIE) “Open Doors” 2005 annual report on study abroad found that U.S. student participation in study abroad has almost tripled since the mid 1980s, with more than 180,000 students having studied abroad in 2003-2004—and this statistic does not include the sizeable number of students working, interning, and volunteering abroad.

While the future of international education looks promising, in the context of the overall undergraduate student population, we still have a long way to go toward becoming “globalized.” Only about one percent of U.S. undergraduate students participate in study abroad during their degree program, according to the U.S. Department of Education; and, IIE data shows that although American students continue to study abroad in larger numbers, they do so for shorter time periods.

At a time when greater international awareness and understanding is critical, it is regrettable that still so few students take advantage of this most important educational opportunity. For this reason, we are publishing two new biannual issues of Transitions Abroad called “The Student Guide to Studying, Volunteering, and Working Overseas.” These special issues will be delivered biannually to Institutional Subscribers in September and February. We hope that they will provide high school, college, and post-graduate students with the practical information they need to consider an overseas experience and make the best choices. Each issue will cover the many different types of opportunities available—from formal study, to volunteering, to paid work and internships, to scholarships, and low-cost international travel and living.

We invite students and education abroad professionals to contribute articles for these special issues of Transitions Abroad. Guidelines are available on our website. We also encourage students to participate in Transitions Abroad’s upcoming 2006-2007 annual Student Writing Contest. For more details, see the Student Writing Contest Guidelines.

Please write to us with your suggestions and editorial ideas. We look forward to sending you the next Transitions Abroad “Student Guide” in February 2007.

—Sherry Schwarz