A.B. departments show marked differences in study abroad rates

Approximately 56 percent of undergraduate students at the University engage in study abroad programs between semesters and summers abroad, and 27 percent do it more than once, according to Director of Study Abroad in the Office of International Programs Mell Bolen.

However, the number of students that spends a full semester abroad or more is much smaller. 225 A.B. students spent at least one semester abroad in the past three academic years, according to data disclosed by 16 academic departments to The Daily Princetonian. 11 departments did not disclose specific numbers or did not respond to requests for comment.

Looking at the trends in semesters abroad by department from the past three years, there are marked differences in the numbers and percentages of students from students in different A.B. majors who elected to study abroad.

All departments have students involved in international programs each year, Bolen said, but the number of individuals who take a full semester abroad in a year might vary. For example, the astrophysics department had no students study abroad in the 2013-14 year, while 11 students in both the English and comparative literature departments studied abroad in the same year.

Several departments, including the art and archeology, and the physics departments, said they don’t keep records of the number of students who partake in semesters abroad or do not make this information publicly available, as is the case with the classics and politics departments. The ecology and evolutionary biology department, the Slavic languages and literatures department and the geosciences department did not respond to requests for these statistics.

The Wilson School did not provide statistics on the number of students who have studied abroad in the past three years, but did say that 40 students are anticipated to study abroad in 2014-15 alone.

Several departments were only able to provide rough estimates, such as the psychology department, which estimates that three to five students study abroad each semester. The Spanish and Portuguese languages and cultures department said that only eight students have studied abroad over the past three years, and the anthropology department said that 20 students have taken semesters abroad over the past three years. Likewise, the German department reports three students studying abroad in the past three years.

The classics department is one of the departments that withheld numbers, but Jill Arbeiter, its undergraduate coordinator, offered a general sense of the distribution of students who have gone abroad in recent years.

“Some years there can be none, and I think maybe the most we’ve had in one year is three,” Arbeiter said.

This department has had approximately 30 students per class in recent years. Arbeiter described the department as very supportive of students taking semesters abroad, but noted that since language is an important component of classics, a student must have progressed through a certain level of language coursework to consider going abroad.

The percentage of students who study abroad from one academic year to another may vary widely, especially in smaller departments. For example, in the art and archeology department between the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years, the percentage of students in the department taking a semester abroad dropped from 13.5 percent to 2.7 percent, but that difference accounted for four fewer students studying abroad.

In 2012-13, the comparative literature department had only four students study abroad; 2014-15 had only had two students opt to study abroad thus far, showing the fluctuations in study abroad trends within the department within the past few years.

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Similarly, the molecular biology department saw two, then eight, then six students take semesters abroad in the past three years. This corresponds to 7.4 percent, 32 percent and 27.3 percent of students in the department studying abroad each year.

The music department, however, reports similar numbers each years, with four, three and five students studying abroad from the 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 years respectively.

The philosophy department reported three students studying abroad in 2012-13, then one student in each academic year since then.

The natural sciences and mathematics departments send relatively low percentages of students abroad. An average of 1.7 percent of students studying mathematics have taken a semester abroad in the past three years. Likewise, on average 4.16 percent of students in the chemistry department and 4.31 percent of students in the molecular biology department have studied abroad in the past three years.

“I do think there are some departments that are more open to approving courses abroad in terms of meeting specific departmental requirements,” Bolen said.

The ease of studying abroad depends on the individual goals of the students, the correlation between their plans abroad and their academic focuses and independent work, and their prior academic planning, Bolen said.

The astrophysics department reported the lowest number of students taking semesters abroad, with no students opting to do so in the past three years. However, 65 percent of students in the department in 2012, 75 percent in 2013 and 25 percent in 2014 had international experiences abroad through various summer programs abroad, according to OIP.

The astrophysics department was unique in that its collaborations abroad focused on research rather than coursework, as it has connections with telescopes in Chile and Japan, Bolen said. Therefore, students may often travel to one of these locations to work on their junior papers or senior theses.

Meanwhile, all students in the comparative literature department are mandated to spend time abroad, according to comparative literature major Victoria Su ’15.

Su said that everybody does summer programs abroad in her department; a fair number elect to study abroad for a semester and some spend an entire year abroad.

“Our department is known for being super flexible,” Su said in describing the ease of taking courses abroad. “We have very few requirements that are strictly within [comparative literature]. For a lot of it you can use interdisciplinary stuff.”

In the 2013-14 academic year, 25 percent of comparative literature majors took at least a semester abroad, although this number is somewhat higher than what has been seen in other academic years.

Students may study abroad during the spring semester of sophomore year, either semester of junior year or fall semester of senior year, Bolen said.

“They basically have to meet with their departmental representative and discuss what it is they’re trying to accomplish and, if needed, get approval for the specific classes they plan to take abroad and/or approval for any independent working they’re going to do while they’re abroad,” Bolen said.

She explained that OIP talks to departmental representatives frequently to discuss and craft appropriate study abroad options. For some departments, OIP is also invited to information sessions for students to talk about study abroad opportunities.

According to Bolen, the Study Abroad office at OIP had over 2,000 advising appointments between January 2013 and July 2013.

“We also work with departments to narrow down lists of programs that they think are a good fit for what they’re trying to do in their department,” Bolen said.

Director of the French Language Program Christine Sagnier explained that she collaborates with OIP by regularly visiting programs in France so she can best recommend programs to other students. When students approach her looking for opportunities abroad, she said, she connects them with OIP.

According to Sagnier, her department encourages students to take as much time as possible abroad to gain a strong sense of linguistic and cultural immersion.

“There are so many skills; the linguistic skills are really just not the central part,” Sagnier said in describing the importance of study abroad. “They become less ethnocentric, they become more able to actually understand the multiplicity of perspectives.”

The way in which OIP reports study abroad data by major is a list of the percentage of students in each major that have had “international experiences,” a term that encompasses “study abroad, international internships, research abroad and service abroad” according to Bolen.

Comparing the data OIP reports and the data on semesters taken abroad recorded by departments highlights the large number of students who travel in the summer instead of during the semester.

For the Classes of 2013 and 2014 studying in the music department, OIP states that 78 and 70 percent of students, respectively, went abroad. But looking at all the academic years in which they could have taken semesters abroad — the 2011-12 through the 2013-14 years — between 15 and 27.8 percent of students went abroad for full semesters.

Likewise, only 4.84, 5.26, and 1.92 percent of students in the philosophy department studied abroad in the 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 academic years respectively. However, OIP reported that 71 percent of philosophy majors from the Class of 2014, which could have only taken a semester abroad during the three years above, went abroad in one form or another during that time.

No strong trends emerge from the available data in terms of net increases or decreases in study abroad numbers in recent years, as they seem to fluctuate each year.

Editor's note: This article explores study abroad figures for students in A.B departments. To read about study abroad at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, click here.