Open Doors Disability & Education Abroad Statistics
Maintaining the participation levels of students with disabilities studying abroad in this 5th year of data collection.
Kicking-off International Education Week 2012, the Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange reports an increase in U.S. students studying abroad; 273,996 U.S. students studied abroad for credit during the academic year 2010/11, up 1% compared to the previous year.
Study Abroad Students with Disabilities
Most post secondary institutions still do not track disability status of their education abroad participants, leaving the disability status for 81% of education abroad students unknown.
Among those institutions where the disability status of study abroad students is known, 4.1% of study abroad students had disabilities in 2010/11 (up 0.1% from the previous year). Among those institutions that know what specific disability they had, the breakdown is:
- Learning Disability/ADD (51.3%)
- Mental Disability (19.9%)
- Other Disability (14.6%)
- Sensory Disability (7.3%)
- Physical Disability (6.9%)
Comparison with Previous Years
For numbers over these last five years, see Open Doors Data on U.S. Study Abroad: Students with Disabilities.
The first year the disability data was collected 2.6% of students with disabilities were reported to have studied abroad in 2006/07. The increase in percentage over the years can be attributed in part to campuses starting to put into place processes to collect this data.
Students with disabilities typically represent 9-11% of the student population on U.S. campuses (2008 U.S. Department of Education, National Postsecondary Student Aid Studies).
Top 10 Institutions
This year the following U.S. institutions reported the greatest numbers of study abroad students with disabilities:
- Stanford University (114)
- *Calvin College (80)
- *University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (63)
- California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo (55)
- University of Denver (55)
- American University (52)
- Arizona State University (51)
- *New York University (51)
- *San Diego State University (50)
- University of Kansas (50)
*These were top institutions also in the previous year
Source Information
This data is from the Institute of International Education (IIE)’s annual Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange. This is the fifth year IIE collected the disability study abroad data.
The National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange (NCDE), which is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and administered by Mobility International USA, provides free information and referral services to increase the participation and inclusion of people with disabilities in international exchange programs.
