Tulane University began its study abroad program in the 1950s. In 2025, Tulane offered 240 programs in 57 countries, over double the number of programs available five years prior.
Around one-third of Tulane students will study abroad, according to Annie Gibson, director of study abroad at the Center for Global Education at Tulane University.
“Tulane has continued to [show an] increase in interest in a kind of global, international experience for undergraduates,” Gibson said.
From 2018 to 2024, business, public health, psychology, communications and political science were consistently in the top five majors at Tulane that studied abroad. From 2023 to 2024, psychology and neuroscience also made the top five.
“The largest number of majors abroad are … the majors on campus that have the largest numbers of students. So communications, political science, business,” Gibson said. “Even majors … that don’t necessarily come to mind.”
In 2020, the year the COVID-19 lockdown began, the total number of students who studied abroad nationwide was less than one-tenth than of the years before and after. Since then, study abroad has regained popularity, with nearly 300,000 American students studying abroad in 2023, almost returning to pre-pandemic levels.
“Tulane had to call all students home during that spring of COVID … and study abroad was on pause in 2020 [and] most of 2021,” Gibson said. “But numbers have really rebounded since COVID-19. We are seeing record numbers of students at Tulane choosing to study abroad.”
In the 2023 to 2024 academic year, Tulane was ranked eighth in the nation for study abroad participation, with over a 75.6% participation rate.
Aside from the rebound in study abroad popularity, the pandemic also shifted other aspects of the student study abroad population.
“We lost some of the … word of mouth [for] programs that are off of the beaten track,” Gibson said. “Some of these lesser-known destinations had very positive reviews … [but] because we essentially had two years where students weren’t studying abroad … the trend was that students started to go to places that sounded familiar [instead].”
“The number of students that are choosing to study abroad in [large] cities like Madrid and Barcelona actually creates a challenge for … universities receiving so many students,” Gibson said. “We want students to have [an] integrated experience, and when we are sending such large numbers, it can be a challenge to manage in the local context.”
In 2023-2024, 64% of Tulane’s undergraduate students studied in Europe. Denmark and the United Kingdom were the top-ranked countries from 2018 to 2021. Spain, Italy and Brazil were also ranked among the top five countries in the 2023 to 2024 school year, with Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese as the top languages studied abroad at Tulane.
CEA CAPA Barcelona is ranked as the university’s most popular program by number of attendees. The Office of Study Abroad has begun placing enrollment caps on this program and others, such as the Danish Institute for Study Abroad Copenhagen, due to oversubscription.
“I think the student body today … wants to be critically aware of the world,” Gibson said. “More and more, these interpersonal, intercultural skills are the things that will matter in the job search, as more and more things can be accomplished with AI.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article stated that approximately 30% of Tulane students studied abroad in the 2023-24 academic year, whereas 75.6% actually did, according to updated enrollment data. It also stated that Tulane offered 172 programs in 51 different countries, whereas in fact the university offered 240 programs in 57 countries. Lastly, Tulane’s most popular program was CEA CAPA Barcelona, not DIS Copenhagen, according to an administrator in the NTC Center for Global Education.