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Australia (Hankyoreh file photo)

As the COVID-19 pandemic shows signs of abating, more and more people are signaling renewed interest in traveling and studying overseas.

A survey of 10,000 prospective international students in 182 countries by Educations.com, which specializes in study abroad, showed Australia topping the list of the countries where students would most like to study overseas in 2022. South Korea came in 22nd, one spot higher than in 2021.

Educations.com based its preference ranking on seven assessment categories with different weighted values. The highest weighted category was quality of education (26.82%), followed by achievement of career goals (19.91%), personal growth (18.43%), experiencing a new culture or lifestyle (17.25%), making new friends and widening professional networks (7.15%), learning a new language (5.37%), and adventure (5.07%).

With a total score of 83.31 points, Australia beat out last year’s top-ranked country Canada, which earned 81.53% this time. Next in line were other traditionally popular countries for study abroad, with Germany in third place, the US in fourth, Switzerland in fifth, and the UK in sixth.

In terms of the most important metric — educational quality — high scores were given to the UK (25.94), the US (25.93) and Australia (25.20). In the area of achieving professional goals, Switzerland had a substantial lead with 18.67 points, while Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Canada all earned more than 16 points.

High scores for personal growth went to two northern European countries, Finland (18.21) and Denmark (18.01%), followed by Switzerland, the Netherlands and Norway.

In the case of Asia, both Japan (13th) and China (16th) showed higher study abroad preference ratings than South Korea (22nd). The two countries were respectively up by three and five spots from the 2021 rankings. China earned a low score of 4.22 in the personal growth category but received 5.22 in the language learning category, putting it far ahead of South Korea and Japan (0.67 points each).

Mexico (21st) was the most preferred country in the Central and South America region, while the United Arab Emirates (29th) topped the preference list for the Middle East and South Africa (47th) for Africa.

By Park Jung-eon, deputy editor-in-chief of Economy Insight

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