Why so few study abroad?

With looming application deadlines, and admission decisions in some countries, one wonders how many college or graduate school bound students have applied to study abroad. This has implications for capacity building in the country, but perhaps even more important to the individual applicant is the prospect of tremendous personal gain from earning a foreign degree.

The number of Armenian students studying abroad has been growing over the years but remains well under 3000. According to statistics reported by UNESCO, 2762 students were enrolled in foreign institutions of higher learning in 2004. Of these 1239 were hosted by Russia, 412 by the US, 371 by Germany, 290 by France, and the remaining students by mostly European countries. Depending on the data source, this represents about 3-6 percent of enrollments in the country. Of the 412 enrollments in the US, 112 were at the undergraduate level (US Institute of Higher Education). Given the fact that education, in particular graduate education, is mostly free, why don't we see more enrollments in the west? What explains this trend?

A similar pattern is also observed in Georgia, except for the larger number of enrollments in Germany, and in Azerbaijan, except for the enrollments in Turkey. So there is some sort of a regional pattern, but what is driving this pattern of behavior? Language skills should be ruled out given the dominance of Chinese students; they score high in math but do not perform as well in English. Students from Turkey are quite visible as well. Could it be lack of information? I kind of doubt this as well.

..................... Country of Origin, 2004 ....................
Host Country Armenia Azerbaijan Georgia China Israel Turkey Albania
Russia...... ...1239 ..... 1027 ...1357 ...na ....na ....na .....na
US ......... ....412 .......238 ....373 87943 ..3474 .11398 ....916
Germany .... ....371 .......311 ...3000 25284 ..1116 .27582 ....625
France ..... ....290 .......171 ....275 11514 ...343 ..2273 ....369
Belgium .... .....42 .........8 .....22 .1496 ....56 ...292 .....68
Italy ...... .....38 .........7 .....26 ..276 ...923 ...182 ...8494
Turkey...... ....... ......1428 ....143 ..107 ....21 ...... ....591
UK ......... .....36 ........87 .....80 47738 ..1300 ..1960 ....188

It will be good to hear your views on why enrollments continue to be so low, and why so many opportunities are overlooked.

[I have posted the number of the enrollments in Armenia on aea.am. But these are quite different from those reported by armstat. Any help in reconciling the two sets of data is greatly appreciated.]

The Growing Cash in Circulation

The amount of Drams in circulation in Armenia grew by some 46 percent in 2006, from 155 to 227 billion, repeating the growth pace of 2005 (also see my October 2006 post). Most noteworthy, the 50000 Dram note (about USD 125) experienced the fastest growth. It is almost ten times the amount in circulation in 2005, and grew from about one percent of the Drams in circulation to 7 percent.


Millions of Drams outside the Central Bank
Nomination.. 2001 .2002 .2003 ..2004 ..2005 ..2006
10000 drams...... ..... .7295 .25221 .42980 .79443
20000 drams 12351 24155 23042 .21017 .40196 .55515
50000 drams.. 780 .1607 .1386 ...945 ..1612 .15717
......total 66693 92089 96838 105534 155275 226841

Drams per USD 555 ..573 ..579 ...533 ...458 ...416

The back to back growth in currency in circulation is phenomenal and may have significant implications for economic activity and its measurement. I am also very intrigued by the spike in the circulation of the 50000 Dram note. Do we know of any on going research on the causes and consequences of the observed trend?