As if there weren’t enough reasons to explore internationally, research is backing up the claim that students who study abroad have an easier time finding a job after graduation.
A recent study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Kaplan, Inc. shows that students from across the globe were twice as likely to be employed within six months of graduating if they journeyed abroad and gained international experience.
This isn’t the first time that research has supported taking your education abroad. Last year, the Erasmus Student Network found that nearly two-thirds of employers value and look for international experience in new hires. In addition, the University of California found that 97 percent of study abroad students found employment within a year of graduation, as compared to about half as many college grads who chose to stay at home.
“One of the realities of the world of work is that it is becoming increasingly international,” wrote Kaplan researchers. In fact, according to a 2013 report by the British Council, more than “two-thirds of international employers reported that their employers frequently interacted with colleagues outside their country, while over half said their employees frequently engaged with partners and clients overseas.
Studying abroad, although linked to a spike in employed college grads, may not be the direct cause of employment. Instead, Andre Martin, the vice president for talent development and chief learning officer at Nike, credited the high employment of students with global experience to a “growth mindset.” A growth mindset is essentially a state of mind in which someone constantly tries to learn, progress and evolve, even when he or she fails or is in an uncomfortable situation.
“The growth mindset is not built by staying in one place,” Martin told researchers. “Multinationals also need people to be mobile, not tried to one place, and open to the idea of travel.” In this case, some experts believe capitalizing on a study abroad opportunity is a symptom of having a growth mindset. This may be true considering over half of the students who responded to the study said their experiences abroad made them more open to looking at a diverse range of jobs after graduation.
The study, which investigated undergraduate, Master’s and PhD students in nine different countries, found that 78 percent of respondents agreed that colleges and universities have a responsibility to offer students international opportunities in order to prepare them for a more globalized workforce.
“The mission of universities, and even more so public universities, is to prepare students for employability, and today that means the global job market,” Professor Enrico Sangiorgi of the University of Bologna explained to the researchers.
Despite the many benefits of international experience, about 40 percent of respondents noted that they turned down an available opportunity to study abroad. And about half of the students in the survey did not realize how beneficial studying internationally really could be until it was too late. Missing the chance to sit in a gelateria in Rome or take a ride on a camel in Morocco is sad enough—adding unemployment to the list is even worse.
Unfortunately for many students, that opportunity isn't always available. While over 80 percent of students in the U.S. and Germany had study abroad opportunities offered at their schools, only 55 percent of students in Brazil and 48 percent of students in China could say the same. Those countries, among others, also fell far behind in offering foreign language courses and a global curriculum through higher education.
So what can we do when so many students don’t get a chance to study abroad? “Universities could be working with businesses to allow them to shape the curriculum to prevent skill gaps, while we should also be thinking more effectively about how universities could curate gap years, summers and semesters overseas,” Martin said. In addition, researchers suggest that businesses on-site international training for employees who never had the chance to study abroad.