Do foreign students realize that the university they chose is targeting them as part of a burgeoning billion-dollar industry? The fact that a few thousand colleges dispatched 7,000 educators to Minneapolis, Minn. this week to exchange ideas at a conference about global workforce development indicates that there is quite a bit of money and prestige at stake for these institutions of higher learning.

It’s no secret that foreign students pay higher tuition fees than domestic ones and colleges will go to considerable lengths to reel them in. Even the U.S. Congress is getting into the act.

A new piece of bi-partisan legislation called the Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act sets an ambitious goal for 1 million U.S. students to study abroad by 2017. The bill authorizes $80 million for grants to individual students, colleges and universities and nongovernmental institutions that provide study abroad opportunities.  The bi-partisan bill is in tribute to the late senator from Illinois. (I remember Simon’s bow ties, and recall that he jumped into a presidential race in 1988.)

One of the session highlights involved a presentation by Hobsons spotlighting data from a 2006 study of college students planning to study overseas from their bases in China, US, Nigeria, and India. By far, the most popular reason to study abroad was this: “Standard of education is better abroad than in my home country.”

Students from more affluent countries prefer to study abroad more for the ‘experience’ than to learn a particular skill.  Have you studied abroad and would you recommend it to others?