How can we revive the popularity of exchanges and study trips? Make students feel safe

University students expand their worldviews tremendously when they go abroad as part of their degrees. They learn about themselves and discover different ways of thinking about their discipline; they make new and lasting friendships; they acquire social capital. But how can we as educators and administrators make sure that they have a good experience?

I am referring to what I loosely term “the pastoral care” of students when they go abroad. When studying overseas, students have needs that go beyond what they might require when “back home”. Homesickness, exposure to unfamiliar illnesses, unknown modes of criminality, foreign administrative and governmental processes, partying too hard and new ways of learning can all derail overseas experiences and thus require consideration by home institutions. 

Why should we bother supporting students to travel abroad? 

Outbound mobility matters. We spend a lot of time focused on how to do better when international students come to our campuses, which is of course important. But that is built on an assumption that the world will come to us. This feeds into a perception of international student recruitment as extractivist and used to prop up university finances in many countries. While inbound student mobility brings positive pedagogical and cultural impacts, through a more diverse campus, we also need to think about ourselves and our students going out into the world.

During the pandemic, international student mobility suffered. As a result, institutions paid more attention to the type of mobility that attracts fees and keeps university budgets healthy. We have not spent as much time attempting to rejuvenate outbound mobility, which generates little to no profit, but enhances the education of our students. 

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This means our students are less prepared for the world that awaits them, they build less social capital, and become less well-rounded citizens and less effective lifelong learners. So, redesigning student mobility offerings and providing the support that enables students to study abroad safely is imperative.

Why has outbound student mobility fallen in popularity?

Outbound student mobility has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Based on data I and colleagues collated as part of a student survey, as well as anecdotal evidence from students and administrators, we can point to a few reasons. Students are wary of being away from home should the world go wonky again and cost-of-living pressures make it very difficult to be away from home for extended periods, yet institutions still rely primarily on longer-term outbound mobility experiences than what students seem willing to engage in, as I will explain.

Long- versus short-term overseas study

Currently, the most common form of outbound student mobility is semester-long or even year-long exchanges, which operate on a budget-neutral reciprocity basis with international partners. From a pastoral care perspective, the responsibility of the home university is minimal, as the point is for the student to feel integrated into their new host university and benefit from its pastoral support services. But students often report wanting some ongoing connection to their home universities during the exchange, which can alleviate homesickness without hindering their cultural immersion. Home universities should touch base with students and reinforce the importance of their being at their chosen location, both as individuals and as representatives of their institution. Maintaining this connection to students and reinforcing their sense of belonging is an easy and simple way to demonstrate care.

But this semester- or year-long form of mobility has been in decline across many countries since the pandemic. 

Instead, short-term mobility, like study tours, is on the rise. Study tours usually comprise a group of students from the same university – or department or degree – going as group to a foreign destination, often accompanied by a staff member. They usually last for a few weeks – the ones I oversee are two weeks – and combine academic instruction by local experts, plus teaching by the academic leading the group, with site visits and more immersive experiences to places relevant to the course subject matter. Often, these tours comprise some work experience, when the home institution is less involved in the day-to-day. I am privileged to oversee a number of these programmes in my position as associate dean (international). Oh, the stories I could tell.

For the most part, students are delightful and have transformative experiences. They are happy to be in a new place, to learn new things, and to meet new people. They are also happy to have the security blanket of home – in the form of a familiar staff member or fellow students or both. 

In this context, students tend to take more risks: they choose more adventurous destinations, which is a good thing as it expands worldviews; they engage in more socially risky behaviour such as intense partying; and the presence of familiar faces from home can mean they forget to check themselves in staying safe. I and my colleagues leading these groups have ended up in foreign police stations reporting pickpocketing incidents more times than I care to remember. As the university leads such trips, we owe students a higher duty of care compared with an exchange scheme. We ought to accompany students in the classroom and field visits; we ought to be their first point of contact should something go wrong; we need to be available and able to liaise on their behalf with local authorities and insurance companies. This translates into more work outside “normal” academic commitments, for which we do not always have optimal structures, particularly when needing to negotiate time zones.

There is a sliding scale in terms of pastoral care expectations for conscientious educators and institutions, which has an impact on the likelihood of students taking these opportunities if their main concern is a sense of safety – physical, yes, but primarily emotional and cultural. We need to weigh workload costs against considerations of access and equity.

And we need to think through how the design of each overseas experience helps students develop cross-cultural competencies – short-term mobility can have a tremendous impact, but if students only engage with colleagues from home, some of these effects can be dampened.

Whether short or long, these experiences are transformative. The added workload and duty of care is worth it when you see the near-immediate impact on students, as they become more self-assured, gain cultural capital, and become a more curious version of themselves.

Lucas Lixinski is professor and associate dean (international) at the Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney.