Steve Nerlich: PhD Presentation

The value and evaluation of studying abroad for students from Australian universities: What is the return on investment and how can it be measured?

In 2017, nearly 50,000 students from Australian universities studied abroad. That activity involved significant investment by the students themselves, as well by their universities and by government funding sources, such as the $50 million per annum New Colombo Plan. Within his PhD research, Steve Nerlich has investigated the expressed purpose and anticipated value arising from students studying abroad and sought to conceptually frame that anticipated value as a return on the investments made. This approach enables the wide range of study abroad programs currently available to be evaluated by drawing on existing national data sources and a worked example will be provided in this presentation.