Abstract
The growing evidence about the benefits of studying abroad calls for increased public efforts to equalize study abroad opportunities among university students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Using student-level data from the nationally representative surveys of three European countries (Italy, France and Germany) between the 2000s and mid-2010s, this paper investigates how the social gap in access to study abroad programs changed over time and what are the factors driving these changes. Logistic regressions are used in order to identify the determinants of study abroad program participation and a decomposition technique is employed in an attempt to both determine how much of the gap each factor explains and compare its relative contribution over time. The results indicate that, not only has disparity in study abroad participation rate between students from more and less advantaged backgrounds not decreased in any of the countries considered here, but there is consistent evidence showing that it has increased in Germany. Differences in earlier educational trajectories and performance between these two groups of students are important predictors of the gap. However, a large part of this gap remains unexplained, and this underscores the important role played by unobserved or difficult-to-measure factors in accounting for inequality.
Highlights
There is a relatively large consensus among academics and policymakers that spending time abroad during undergraduate university studies is highly beneficial to students
Using student-level data from the nationally representative surveys of three European countries (Italy, France and Germany) between the 2000s and mid-2010s, this paper investigates how the social gap in access to study abroad programs changed over time and what are the factors driving these changes
Logistic regressions are used in order to identify the determinants of study abroad program participation and a decomposition technique is employed in an attempt to both determine how much of the gap each factor explains and compare its relative contribution over time
Summary
There is a relatively large consensus among academics and policymakers that spending time abroad during undergraduate university studies is highly beneficial to students. Participants in study abroad programs have the opportunity to acquire a wide range of skills (such as, for instance, intercultural competence, global awareness and foreign language skills) that can help them successfully compete in the labour market. Increasing participation in study abroad programs among students from less advantaged backgrounds is crucial since it would contribute to address the problem of transferring inequality from the education system to the labour market (Netz & Finger, 2016). Di Pietro (2015) finds that study abroad programs improve the employment prospects of especially disadvantaged graduates as they may provide them with an opportunity to develop many marketable skills that their background would not otherwise have exposed them to. Students from less advantaged backgrounds are likely to be the ones benefiting most from an international education experience. Di Pietro (2015) finds that study abroad programs improve the employment prospects of especially disadvantaged graduates as they may provide them with an opportunity to develop many marketable skills that their background would not otherwise have exposed them to. Sorrenti (2017) complements this finding by showing that foreign language skills are rewarded in the
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