Beginnings

After the First World War, American educators started to explore ways of engaging their students in learning about the greater world.  Focusing originally on Europe, study abroad efforts were primarily geared toward providing students with cultural experiences and foreign language instruction.

After World War II, a renewed commitment was made to study abroad as a means to advance not only cultural understanding, but peaceful co-existence. In addressing the United Nations Opening Session held at San Francisco in April 1945, President Harry Truman stated that “if we do not want to die together in war, we have to learn to live together in peace.”

In 1946, President Truman signed the law that established the Fulbright Program, envisioned by Senator J. William Fulbright. Designed primarily for graduate education, this program was the first major U.S. government effort to promote study abroad, and it firmly established the idea that studying in another country could be a means to advance peace. Today nearly 8,000 grants are provided annually to study and research in more than 155 countries. 

TOP 25 DESTINATIONS OF U.S. STUDY ABROAD STUDENTS, 2017/18

Source: Institute of International Education. (2019). "Host Regions and Destinations of U.S. Study Abroad Students, 2014/15 - 2017/18." Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange. Retrieved from http://www.iie.org/opendoors 

Study abroad appears to be becoming an increasing priority among higher education institutions in the U.S. Goucher College, outside of Baltimore, started requiring a study abroad experience of every undergraduate as a condition of graduation.

Some of these destinations are countries that have witnessed conflict and are in the midst of peacebuilding efforts, including Ireland, South Africa, India and Israel. Other countries on this list have dealt with conflict and war historically or are engaged in efforts to prevent future conflict.

Impact

Many in public life view their study abroad experience as a seminal one that helped them advance their careers.  In his third inaugural address in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a plea to all Americans to learn more about the world – this in a way is a call to study abroad:

A nation, like a person, has a mind - a mind that must be kept informed and alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and needs of its neighbors - all the other nations that live within the narrowing circle of the world.