One of my ECONS101 tutors is off on study abroad later this year, to the University of California at Berkeley. What an incredible opportunity for her! I am constantly surprised, though, at how few of my students take the opportunity for a trimester abroad. In many cases, it is possible to do the period of study abroad while only paying New Zealand university fees (plus the costs of travel and accommodation, of course).
If a rational student is weighing up whether to study abroad for a trimester (or a whole year), they should be weighing up the costs and the benefits of that decision. The costs are the incremental (extra) costs of studying abroad, while the benefits are the value of the incremental learning (if any), as well as the international experience, cultural competency, and so on, or at least what those 'transferable skills' are worth in the labour market after graduation.
Sadly though, study abroad has a reputation for slowing down student progression, meaning that they take longer to graduate. That may be because not all credits studied while overseas will cross-credit back to the student's original university, or the student doesn't put in as much effort while overseas, when faced with the competing priorities of study and sightseeing.
However, that reputation for slowing progress may not be deserved, as shown in this new article by Silvia Granato (European Commission, Joint Research Centre) and co-authors, published in the journal Economics of Education Review (open access). They look at the outcomes for students at the University of Bologna who applied to participate in the Erasmus programme, which allows students to study abroad for up to a year in another European Union country.
The University of Bologna is the oldest university in Europe, and the second largest public university in Italy, so the results may have broader applicability. Granato et al. take advantage of the fact that students who apply to the programme are assigned a score, based on a combination of their GPA, their motivations for studying abroad, and their language proficiency. By comparing students just above the cutoff, and students just below the cutoff, Granato et al. can establish the impact of the Erasmus programme on student outcomes (this is what we refer to as a regression discontinuity design [*]). The impact of the Erasmus programme measured in this way is a good estimate of the causal impact of the programme, for students who are close to the cutoff score. For students further away from the cutoff, the effects could be different.
Anyway, Granato et al. use data from students who made an application between the 2013/14 and 2018/19 academic years. They look at Bachelor's and Master's degree students separately, and find that:
...spending a portion of university studies abroad does not have an impact on the probability of graduating on time for either group. Moreover, it has a positive effect on the final graduation mark of bachelor’s students only. The estimates show that the latter obtain a 2-point premium in their final grade, which is approximately a third of one standard deviation of the final grade in the estimation sample.
Then, looking at the heterogeneity of the effects, they find that:
...the effect on the final graduation mark is remarkably stronger for graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and students who apply for the Erasmus programme earlier in their studies, suggesting that the observed impact might be related to the content of exams taken during the study period abroad.
So, while students do achieve a slightly higher grade overall in their studies, that is driven by their performance while overseas. Exploring this further, Granato et al. find that:
...the positive effect on the final graduation mark appears to be driven by programmes in host institutions of relatively lower quality – and thus arguably with a relatively lower quality of learning inputs – and, in particular, when the duration of the period abroad is longer.
Taken altogether, this doesn't suggest that students are really benefiting from their study abroad. However, it isn't making them any worse off either. But what about after graduation? On that point:
We merge student administrative data with survey data on student choices and outcomes one year after graduation and investigate the potential impact of study abroad on the probability of continuing studies and of being employed. We do not find significant effects on these outcomes, although our analysis is likely hampered by the small sample size.
Although statistically insignificant, Bachelor's degree students are 10.2 percentage points more likely to enrol in a Master's degree programme abroad after participating in the Erasmus programme, and Master's degree students are 7.7 percentage points more likely to be employed and 4.2 percentage points more likely to be employed abroad. That is suggestive evidence of positive outcomes of the study abroad period.
Overall though, the best we can see is that the programme doesn't make students any worse off. Again, it is worth reiterating that these results apply to students who are close to the cutoff score. Students who are well above, or well below, the cutoff score may experience different impacts (and we know nothing about those impacts from these results).
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[*] Actually, because not all students who are offered a place accept the offer, the assignment to the Erasmus programme is not perfect. This actually makes identification of the causal effects of the programme even stronger, since Granato et al. can use an offer as an instrument for completing a period of study abroad, in what we refer to as a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (it's fuzzy because of the imperfect assignment to treatment).
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