Georgia report shows students who travel perform better academically

University of Colorado student Ana Novelli will make her four-year graduation deadline, even though she's earning a double degree in Spanish and psychology and studied abroad in Peru for half of her junior year.Novelli began studying Spanish in sixth grade and improved her fluency during her six months abroad, when she took courses such as anthropology and ethics in her second language. She plans to teach English in Peru upon graduation, and she'd eventually like to start a nonprofit in the South American country.

A new study from the University of Georgia shows that students who study abroad tend to perform better academically: On average, their grades are higher and they graduate at better rates. The findings counter ideas that study abroad is akin to an extended vacation, a perception that international education offices on college campuses have long tried to debunk.We've been battling that for years the idea that students go abroad just to have fun, said Larry Bell, director of international education at CU. That's not at all the case.The decade-long study at Georgia compared the academic performance of about 19,100 students who had studied abroad with a control group of 18,000 students who had not gone abroad. Findings show that the four-year graduation rate was 49.6 percent for study abroad students, compared with 42.1 percent for their peers in the control group.

The Georgia Learning Outcomes of Students Studying Abroad Research Initiative found that grade-point averages improved after students studied abroad. Prior to studying in a foreign country, the students' mean grade-point average was 3.24, but it bumped up to 3.3 following their study-abroad experience. For students in the control group during the same period, the average GPA increased from 3.03 to 3.06.Bell said informal research on the Boulder campus has shown that students who study abroad graduate at the same rates as their peers and tend to have slightly higher grades.About one in four CU Boulder students studies abroad, but the university in its long-term planning has called for that to increase.For Novelli, her program in Peru gave her a cultural understanding and allowed her to immerse herself in the Spanish language.My Spanish speaking skills increased 100 percent, she said.Novelli said that upon returning to CU, she wasn't expecting that she'd be able to finish her degree on time since she couldn't take some required classes while abroad. But she met with an academic adviser and will be taking a heavy course load her senior year.