Study in France is very famous. Travel study is rapidly becoming a must-have component of university degrees. Young people embarking on their first degree having recently left home are often torn between taking a year or two off to backpack around the world, enjoying their new-found freedom, or going to university.
Now they can do both. Some universities have offered study abroad for years, namely the ones offering languages. My wife studied in France for a year during her French degree, for example.
But more and more, universities are realising the value of travel as a learning approach that deepened and broadens a student's experience to a whole new level.
Some of the top Christian universities in Canada offer two semesters abroad, one travelling through Europe on a bus, the other in South East Asia studying at a local university.
So what exactly does this accomplish for the students? Apart from satisfying the youthful lust for travel and adventure, not to mention freedom from 'home', travel study is like adding 3D visual aids to a classroom. Instead of talking about the Sistine Chapel and looking at pictures online, students can learn about it while standing underneath it. This is unforgettable, as opposed to immediately forgettable. Writing an essay on Ypres while standing in a trench is going to be a lot more powerful than writing it in a library somewhere.
And so universities are discovering that the calibre of student they are turning out, if they incorporate travel study into their curricula, is dramatically enhanced. They are more able to travel and engage with the world and have a worldview that is impossible to generate at a regular university.