2024/2025
Higher education annual report
Introduction
Jennifer Acosta Executive Vice President Higher Education
Over the 2024–2025 academic year, WorldStrides Higher Education continued to move forward with purpose— supporting students, faculty, and institutions as global learning continued to regain momentum and evolved in meaningful ways. While the core motivations behind international education remain steady, how students engage, choose destinations, and design their experiences continues to shift.
This annual report offers a focused look at those changes. It examines participation trends, destination growth, and program formats across the past academic year (August 2024–July 2025), with select comparisons to prior years. Our insights reflect the full breadth of our portfolio, from short-term faculty-led programs to independent experiences including traditional study abroad, internships, servicelearning, and research.
What stands out most is not just growth, but intention. Students are making more purposeful choices, faculty are designing increasingly impactful programs, and institutions are planning ahead with creativity and care. I am continually encouraged by the dedication of our team and the trust our partners place in us.
As we look ahead to 2026, we hope this report serves as both a reflection and a resource—informing planning, sparking ideas, and supporting your goals. Thank you for your continued partnership and putting your trust in WorldStrides.
Programs for everyone
With a wide variety of education abroad modalities, we offer programs to accommodate the goals of students and universities.
Study Abroad
Our traditional study abroad programs allow students to enroll at one of our partner host universities, where they can experience the life of local students. These programs can range from a two-week January experience that lets students squeeze study abroad into their winter break to a full academic year. Our programs also allow students to combine coursework with internships, community engagement, or Veritas Christian Study Abroad at select locations.
Experiential programs
Our experiential programs are designed for students looking to gain career experience, develop research skills, or engage with community-based organizations. Full-time internships, community engagement, or research programs are available during the semester or summer, with summer being the more popular option for internships and community engagement.
Custom programs
Our faculty-led programs are customized to meet the goals of each university. Our experience in numerous destinations and across academic sectors means that your students and faculty can apply home university curriculum to global contexts.
Our faculty-led programs are built in true partnership with universities, designed to elevate learning through immersive, real-world experiences. With best-in-class risk management and comprehensive support at every stage, we ensure faculty and students can focus on what matters most, meaningful academic engagement around the world.
- Jennifer Fisher, Senior Vice President, WorldStrides Higher Education
200+
study and experiential learning programs for individual students
100+
host university partnerships in more than 25 countries
120+
faculty-led destinations with solid partnerships and networks
Service Learning was one of the most amazing experiences during my time abroad. Through my work at the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano, I was able to make lifelong friends who invited me into the local culture, [allowing me to] learn from diverse perspectives and, most importantly, leave a positive impact on my host community.
Andres Almonte, University of Colorado - Boulder Community Engagement Student, Spring 2024
Comparing program trends
Program term
Trends in global mobility are always changing. As students’ interest in destinations, desired travel terms, or academic fields shift, we take note to ensure that our programming aligns with the needs of our participants and their universities.
Traditional study abroad programs are seeing continued growth during semester programs, with 45% of students going abroad during spring semester. We are also seeing growth in short-term programs during J-term, which has more than doubled since last year.
May continues to be the most popular month for faculty-led programs, with 46% of travel occurring throughout the month. We are seeing 17% of programs traveling in March, during spring break, and another 15% in June.
69% of study abroad students went abroad during the spring or fall semester.
46% of faculty-led programs went abroad in the month of May.
Studying pop culture and rhetoric in Japan has been the most enriching, rewarding, and inspiring experience I’ve ever had in my entire life. From walking down Harajuku’s Takeshita Street, to the thought-provoking lectures taught by Japanese professors, as well as visiting Kamakura, and all the hidden beauties found in Japanese culture that are waiting to be discovered. . . . I will forever be so grateful for this experience.
Genesis Tribue, Student, University of North Texas
Program destinations
For study abroad students, Europe continues to be a popular location, with Spain, Italy, and Greece holding the top spots.
When it comes to faculty-led programs, Europe remains the most popular region among faculty, with United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy making up the top three destinations. Asia and Africa continue to see growth, increasing by 33% and 50% respectively since last year.
For the second year in a row, the number of undergraduate faculty-led programs visiting multiple countries has increased by nearly 50% year over year.
Focus on Japan
Japan’s rise in popularity reflects broader cultural momentum — from global interest in Japanese cuisine, design, and fashion to the continued influence of anime, gaming, and technology in pop culture. Students increasingly see Japan as a place where learning extends beyond the classroom and into everyday life.
Program spotlight
The Japan Wave
Japan up 32% among study abroad students and faculty-led programs as the destintaion of choice
Expanded opportunities in Japan:
We’re excited to expand our portfolio with new partnerships in the region that reflect growing student nterest:
• University of Yamanashi: great for social science, international studies, and computer science
• Juntendo University: best for health sciences and public health
Retail Merchandising, Hospitality, and Tourism in Japan with University of North Texas
On this two-week program, students gained exclusive access to manufacturing facilities, retail establishments, hotels, restaurants, tourism venues, and UNESCO World Heritage sites. Highlights included a guest lecture with Valuence Inc. Japan on retail strategies for luxury resale and a hands-on tour of Taketsune Co.’s textile workshop. The program emphasized cross-cultural communication, global trend analysis, and market insights while providing a rich historical and cultural perspective of Japan.
Custom program trends
Our custom programs, also referred to as faculty-led programs, continue to see increased enrollment at the undergraduate level. 60% of our faculty-led programs were developed for undergraduate students.
Note: It was growth in our faculty-led programs that inspired us to continue to develop our Strategic Programs, where we tailor exisiting WorldStrides programs to fit unique institutional needs.
Scholarships for Custom Programs
We’re proud to offer scholarships for traveling students each year. This scholarship program evolved from our belief in the value of creating future global leaders and citizens through transformational study abroad experiences. Since last year, we’ve seen a 41% increase in scholarship applications for custom programs; however, only 3% of faculty-led participants apply for our scholarships.
It means way more than the money. The WorldStrides Higher Ed Traveler Scholarship means that I now have the acknowledgement, confidence, and hope to keep moving forward towards whatever comes next because I am a capable of overcoming the challenges life throws at me.
Justin Straus, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Higher Ed Traveler Scholarship, Fall 2024
Trends in participant engagement
Our Global Experiences team works with industry experts and dynamic organizations to give participants real-world immersion and include them in relevant, interactive projects.
While company visits and meetings continue to be the most popular academic engagement choice, guest lectures have increased 38% over last year. This year, students have experienced everything from building “coral trees” in Thailand to constructing ziplines and biodigesters for a local cacao farm in Colombia.
Engagement type
Business Meeting
Guest Lecture
Service Learning
Local Market Immersion
Consulting Project
Panel Discussion
Strategy Challenge
Social Impact
The University of Florida Sustainability Exploration in Greece program exemplifies a high-impact, transformative study-abroad experience. The program intentionally blends academic rigor with immersive cultural engagement, allowing students to learn sustainability not only in the classroom, but through direct interaction with place, people, and history.
Bahar Armaghani, Program Director at University of Florida
Business & economics continues to be the top academic area for faculty-led program engagements. However, we are seeing an increase in engagements with a focus on natural sciences and math, which almost doubled since last year.
Academic focus by engagement
More than 25% of our engagements are categorized as “other” due to their specialized academic focus, showcasing our ability to create customized engagements on any topic to fit specific program goals.
Student demographics
Understanding who our students are is critical to ensuring program accessibility. As patterns relating to gender, area of study, financial need and more arise, we ask ourselves how we can increase access as well as provide support to first time travelers
Gender
Students who identify as female on their passports continue to make up the majority of our travelers (more than 67%), while students who identify as male on their passports increased by 8% over last year.
Students showing up as themselves
Students today appear more likely to self-report identity and background information than in years past. We’re seeing fewer students opt out of these questions or select “prefer not to say,” signaling growing comfort with self-expression and alignment with generational values around inclusion and representation. For many students, sharing this information is viewed not as a risk, but as a way to be better understood and supported.
Our Community & Impact Committee is dedicated to fostering an inclusive and supportive environment for all students. We provide resources and address questions around student identity, including cultural differences students can expect. We want students to feel supported, safe, and ready for their journey abroad.
Year of study
Financial aid
With more than 50% of students using some form of financial aid to go abroad, we strive to help reduce financial barriers through scholarships, grants, payment plans, and more.
$2.4 M
annual scholarship awards and grants awarded by WorldStrides Higher Ed
12%
increase in scholarship submissions year over year
As is historically the case, third-year students make up the majority of our travelers, accounting for more than 57% of participation.
Seniors staying on campus
For the third year in a row, we saw a decrease in fourth-year students studying abroad. Given the anomalous spike in participation by this demographic post-pandemic, we can safely assume this is student mobility returning to pre-pandemic patterns.
Top majors in individual study abroad
Not surprisingly, business and economics are the top areas of study for students going abroad with WorldStrides, accounting for nearly 36% of our participants, up 7% since last year. Despite foreign language courses being extremely popular among travelers, this major continues to be on the decline among students, down 21% year over year. Engineering and computing, as well as design, visual, and performing arts, are on the rise as majors, each growing double digits since last year.
One exciting trend we’ve seen is the growth of cohorts, either officially organized by their home universities or groups of friends electing to study abroad together. Since these groups tend to require similar courses, we’ve been working with our host university partners to ensure that these needed courses are offered. While the availability of courses is a crucial factor in program selection, students (and their universities) might not realize how closely we collaborate with our host universities behind the scenes to co-create courses. We really appreciate these close partnerships that allow us to support academic alignment and keep study abroad accessible to students from a wide variety of majors. Elizabeth Erbeznik, Ph.D.,
Senior Associate Vice President of Curriculum and Academics, WorldStrides
Student learning at host universities
My university abroad met my expectations
My program provided a valuable learning opportunity
Student engagement with host university academics
As one of our top-rated host universities, Korea University offers students an exceptional blend of academic rigor, hands-on learning, and cultural immersion. As one of South Korea’s prestigious SKY universities, KU is known for competitive academics and a wide selection of English-taught courses across business, humanities, Asian studies, and more. Business-focused students can take courses at the globally recognized Korea University Business School, with both AACSB and EQUIS accreditations, while all students benefit from strong community engagement through the KUBA buddy program, which pairs them with Korean peers for guidance and cultural exchange.
Getting hands-on experience in Seville
The WorldStrides Global Campus in Seville offers students the chance to learn both in and outside the classroom through engagement with local culture and community.
Students in the Food and Nutrition Science course take part in hands-on cooking workshops and meet with the student entrepreneurs behind NutreChat, a startup focused on personalized nutrition.
In Photographing Seville, students create photo shoots focusing on architecture, landscape, portraiture, or abstract images, culminating in an exhibit of their printed work.
These experiences deepen cultural understanding and reinforce academic concepts through meaningful, real-world learning. Read
Elevating education through micro-credentials
Students’ course selections at their host universities abroad are often driven by the requirements of their majors and home university degree plans. But we want to ensure that every student has access to engaged learning focused on other cultures and their host communities. To do this, we provide each student the opportunity to earn micro-credentials: badges to showcase skills learned while studying abroad.
One of the most valuable skills I gained was relationship building—both professionally and personally. Connecting with people from different cultures has improved my cultural intelligence, broadened my worldview, and given me friendships that will last a lifetime.
Micah
Kiker, Spring 2025 University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Earned micro-credentials
84%
badges earned were the Wayfinder micro-credential* 8%
increase in micro-credential participation since last year
Digital credentials are a great way for students to boost their professional profiles by engaging in meaningful activities during their program.
Beginning in Spring 2025, students were able to earn the Wayfinder badge directly in our student mobile app, increasing participation by nearly 14%.
*Note: All students are automatically enrolled in the Wayfinder micro-credential.
Sustainability on the Rise
Participation in the Choose Earth micro-credential doubled since last year.
Experiential program trends
Our experiential programs take students beyond the classroom, giving them immersive experiences through internships, community engagement, and research. Summer is most popular for these programs, accounting for 82% of all full-time experiential program participation, a 10% increase year over year.
Experiential course participation
Students are embracing the career-readiness elements built into our internship and community engagement courses. Building on the success of the community engagement course, all interns are automatically enrolled in the international internship course as of Spring 2025. The course provides structured assignments to help them connect their day-to-day experiences abroad with their skill development and long-term personal and professional goals. We are encouraged by the strong participation from students seeking reflective learning and concrete takeaways that help them translate their time abroad into long-term value.
*Students who participated in a university cohort program in Summer 2025 were not included.
Internship: Placements
Students seeking degrees in business & marketing made up the largest percentage of internship students during the past year, followed by those in communications and health.
My internship turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. It gave me the chance to explore the field of social work, with a strong focus on the Māori people, and provided an inside view of how social work operates within a different culture. I could not have been happier with the experience.
Sarah Barnes, University of California, Davis
New Zealand, Summer 2025
Internship: Career-readiness assessment
Students complete a self-assessment at the end of their internship to better understand the skills they gained as aligned with the NACE Career Competencies.
In Spring 2025, we moved our career-readiness assessment to CareerLaunch, which has a different ranking system and scale than our previous assessment tool. Students rank their responses to custom questions about their personal and professional growth as a result of their international internship.
Through my internship, I experienced personal growth by developing the following skills:
Adaptability and curiosity were key behaviors that both interns and supervisors observed in the post program evaluation. We believe interns developed most in these areas because, as part of a global internship, they needed to navigate a new work environment in an unfamiliar cultural context. At the end of the program, supervisors assessed the interns and observed the following behaviors:
Community Engagement: Community sector
Among our community engagement placements, nearly 75% of our students were placed with an organization focused on health, education, or family and youth development. Our host organizations typically support one or two students, creating great opportunities for firsthand experience in these fields.
Health in Latin America
Students can gain practical experience across more than a dozen community clinics in San José, Valparaíso, and Cusco. Many of these placements are neighborhood-based clinics where students observe a wide range of health conditions and engage closely with local providers, offering an intimate look at public health in diverse cultural contexts.
Spirogyra Butterfly Garden in San José, Costa Rica
Spriogyra is located in one of the last wooded areas on the Torres River bio-corridor in the populated capital city of Costa Rica. Here they breed approximately 20 different butterfly species and care for the surrounding gardens to maintain the habitat. Their mission is to operate an eco-sustainable business that provides social, environmental, educational, cultural, and economic benefits for the community.
While working at Spirogyra, our Community Engagement students help maintain the greenhouses and garden trails, feed larvae and butterflies in the laboratory, or assist with content creation and social media marketing.
Community Engagement: Student survey
Our survey asks students to evaluate their experience and reflect on what they learned from their service-learning program, including their experience within their host community and specific challenges they overcame.
My learning was greatly enhanced by service-learning where I was able to see real world issues and problem solving in the healthcare field.
Tessa Appel, University of Denver San José, Costa Rica | Summer 2024
I learned about work culture and cultural norms at my host organization or in my host culture
I learned how to address problems and challenges in a real-world environment
Research programs
Interest grew in research areas such as international relations, political science, neuroscience, and genetics. EuroScholars participants gain hands-on experience under the guidance of leading scholars and their teams. Students can choose from a range of academic projects offered at leading research universities, including the University of Leiden, the University of Geneva, and KU Leuven.
I learned about social issues in the greater context of my host community
Alumni engagement
Shelly Alfaro Director, Alumni Relations
Supporting alumni beyond the experience
Our alumni initiatives continue to evolve alongside our students. We’re reimagining the Global Ambassador program to prioritize human connection—creating more opportunities for in-person engagement, flexible ways to give back, and easier pathways for authentic alumni-to-student connections.
We’ve also expanded our resources that help alumni reflect on how their experiences abroad continue to shape who they are and where they’re headed, from helping them unpack their experience to articulating learned skills in academic and career settings.
Global Amassadors
Our Global Ambassador Program provides students with valuable opportunities to reflect on their experiences while developing key professional skills. Through the program, students build confidence in public speaking, writing professional emails, demonstrating initiative, and much more. By navigating professional settings and communication in a supportive environment, they gain practical experience that prepares them for the workforce while also giving them an opportunity to reflect and give back. Global Ambassador initiatives
Ambassadors
Ambassadors
I feel that my role as a Global Ambassador helped me inspire students to seriously consider studying abroad. Sharing my experience in Spain, including the excursions, cultural immersion, and winning a scholarship, has allowed me to talk to other students about the various fun activities and opportunities studying abroad offers. I’m able to show how it is possible and financially attainable (finances were my biggest worry, too!) by having meaningful conversations with students who then feel less intimidated by the opportunity.
Noah Eklund, University of Louisville Global Ambassador, Spring 2025
Professional development
In addition to our programs, we offer our university partners ongoing professional development support through our podcast, state and national conferences, and educational summits and site visits.
Podcast
Since launching in the fall of 2023, our podcast, “Changing Lives through Education Abroad,” has served as a free resource for our partners to keep up with current study abroad trends and discover new ways to make studying abroad more accessible for diverse student populations.
22K
all time downloads 4K downloads this season
Top 10 downloaded episodes of the season
1. Your Emails are Too Long: Advising Hacks for Reaching Today’s Students
2. Leveling Up Your Pre-Departure Orientation: Effectively Preparing Today’s Students for Study Abroad
3. Off the Beaten Path: Tips for Steering Students to Non-Traditional Destinations
4. The Road Ahead: A Conversation with the Forum on Education Abroad’s Melissa Torres
5. Viva España: Why Spain is a More Popular Study Abroad Destination Than Ever
6. Centering Place-Based Learning in Education Abroad
7. Strategic Travel for International Educators: Perfecting the Art of the Site Visit
8. Further, Faster: Practical Tips & Efficiency Hacks from a One Person Office
9. Fair Trade Study Abroad
10. Catalyzing Climate Action in International Education: A Conversation with CANIE Leaders Kate Hellman & Sebastian Fernandes
Amid ongoing budget constraints and growing uncertainty across higher education, access to free and affordable professional development has never been more essential. For the past three years, the Changing Lives Through Education Abroad podcast has offered practical insights and takeaways on student engagement, leadership, and expanding access. I am honored to share the mic with colleagues and experts who are advancing this work every day, and to celebrate the impact we collectively create for our students and one another.
Zac Macinnes, Vice President of Campus Partnerships, WorldStrides Higher Education
Listen now
Conferences
Each year, we engage with the broader international education community through local and national events, attending and presenting at more than 35 conferences, including:
Special events
We also host and sponsor events each year for our partners to network with peers, gain professional development, and get an inside look at our programming.
Study abroad site visits Tokyo, Athens, & Prague
Faculty-led familiarization trip Croatia & Slovenia
We hosted individual site visits to more than 70 locations in 22 countries, including Morocco, Japan, and South Africa.
Global Education Summit in Washington, D.C.
Beyond Polarization Residency in collaboration with the Forum on Education Abroad
Thank you
for your continued support in our efforts to enhance our programming and broaden access to international education. We hope these insights prove helpful in advising your students of the opportunities available to them abroad.
Please Note: This information has been provided in good faith, and we ask that you share it only with colleagues at your institution.
WorldStrides has over 55 years of experience as the global leader in educational travel, both in the U.S. and abroad. Our portfolio of transformative programs offers life-changing moments for everyone.
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