Education: Who studies abroad?

Students who study abroad are disproportionately:

• wealthier; students from wealthier families are significantly more likely to student abroad.
• white
• female
• humanities or social‑science majors
• attending institutions with strong study‑abroad infrastructure
• their families are more willing to support “passion” fields of study with lower economic ROI

This comes from the Open Doors “field of study” data.

Why humanities majors in particular?

Up to 35-45% of humanities major students, including journalism students, will study abroad.

Humanities majors have:

• more elective flexibility
• more faculty‑led programs (Italy, Spain, UK, France)
• more language requirements
• more cultural capital alignment with European destinations
• families more willing to subsidize non‑vocational education
  Meanwhile, STEM majors face:
• rigid course sequences
• lab requirements
• accreditation constraints
• fewer semester‑long options.

Even if STEM students want to study abroad, the system makes it harder.

Media stories reinforce this bias

• Wealthier students → more likely to major in humanities
• Humanities majors → more likely to study abroad
• Study abroad → more likely to produce “I moved abroad” narratives
• These narratives → disproportionately written by people with cultural and financial capital
• Media representation → skews toward Europe and toward the experiences of affluent young Americans

We end up with numerous media stories written by privileged rich kids, creating a myth that anyone in the U.S. can readily move abroad – especially to Europe. The overwhelming majority of these stories involve Americans moving to Europe – yet only 11-16% of Americans who have moved abroad ended up in Europe. See how the media’s warped sample bias creates a false impression?

Socioeconomic profiles of humanities vs STEM majors

Students from families with more education and cultural capital are more likely to choose lower‑immediate‑earnings majors (like many humanities fields), while students from less advantaged backgrounds are nudged toward “safer,” higher‑earnings majors like many STEM fields.

• Family education & major choice: A recent working paper finds that students with more highly educated parents (especially with graduate degrees) are more likely to choose majors with lower early‑career earnings but higher long‑run growth, and less likely to choose “safe” majors with low downside risk. That’s exactly where many humanities and some social sciences sit.
• Parental income vs parental education: Parental education is more predictive of choosing these “riskier” majors than parental income per se.
• STEM participation & family background: Separate work on STEM participation shows that family income and parental influence strongly shape whether students pursue STEM at all—often framed as a path to economic security.

Bluntly:

• Humanities skew toward students whose families can “absorb” early‑career income risk and who value cultural capital.
• STEM skews more toward students for whom economic security and clear earnings premiums are more salient constraints or goals.

That doesn’t mean “all humanities kids are rich” or “all STEM kids are poor”—but the distribution tilts that way.

How study abroad predicts later international migration

Here the literature is very explicit: international study is not just a one‑off experience; it’s often “learning to migrate.”

• A St Andrews group describes international study as part of a lifetime mobility strategy, not just cultural enrichment. They identify multiple post‑study paths: return home, stay in host country, move to a third country, or circulate—study abroad is the first move in a longer migration trajectory.
• Work on international student migration shows that as countries develop, outgoing student mobility follows an inverted U‑shape—rising with capabilities and aspirations, then changing as domestic options improve.
• A study of international students in the U.S. tracks actual post‑graduation locations, not just intentions, and finds that factors like duration of study, work visas, and economic conditions shape whether students stay, move on, or return.
• OECD synthesis: many countries now explicitly use post‑study work and residency pathways to retain international graduates, turning student mobility into a formal migration channel.

So, for an American who studies abroad (especially in Europe):

1. They gain practical familiarity with living abroad.
2. They build social networks and sometimes language skills.
3. They may discover ancestry‑based or work‑based visa routes.
4. They update their internal model of “what’s possible” in terms of migration.

For a nontrivial subset, study abroad is the first rehearsal for later long‑term migration.

How this shapes the demographics of journalists and travel writers

Who majors in humanities / journalism?

• Disproportionately from families with higher parental education and cultural capital, more able to tolerate lower early‑career earnings.
• These majors are overrepresented in study abroad and especially in Europe‑focused programs (journalism, English, history, media studies).

1. Who studies abroad?
   • Students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to participate; financial barriers filter out many lower‑income students.
   • Humanities and journalism programs are structurally better aligned with study abroad (flexible curricula, faculty‑led programs, language ties).
2. Who becomes a journalist or travel writer?
   • Journalism and media programs actively promote study abroad as a way to build global reporting skills and cross‑cultural storytelling.
   • Students who studied abroad—especially in Europe—acquire both material (clips, photos, experiences) and symbolic capital that later feed directly into “I moved abroad” and travel‑lifestyle content.
3. What stories get written and sold?
   • Editors commission from this pool: young, often female, humanities/journalism grads with study‑abroad or post‑grad experience in Europe.
   • Their own trajectories—humanities major → study abroad → maybe a stint living abroad → freelance writing—become the template for the genre.

So the demographic skew isn’t incidental; it’s pipeline‑encoded:

• Family background → major choice (humanities/journalism)
• Major choice → higher probability of study abroad (especially Europe)
• Study abroad → higher probability of later migration and globally oriented careers
• All of the above → overrepresentation among journalists and travel writers in “I moved abroad” narratives.

More than 50% of those who write travel and “moved abroad” stories had a humanities background AND at least one study abroad. These graduates are not representative of college students or Americans – they tend to be well off rich kids who got to choose their major based on “passion” rather than needed a job to pay the bills.