Beyond Borders: Measuring Academic Mobility between the United States and Mexico

This report covers the mobility of Mexican students, scholars, and exchange visitors during the 2014/15 academic year and the mobility of U.S. students to Mexico in 2013/14. Since the analysis for this study was completed, more recent Open Doors statistics have been released in November 2016 for Mexican students in the United States and U.S. students in Mexico. However, because these two sets of numbers represent only a portion of the mobility covered in this report, and because newer statistics on other forms of mobility (intensive English and scholars) are not yet available, the current report focuses on the prior years’ data (2014/15 and 2013/14). However, one point worth noting is that the latest Open Doors international student statistics for 2015/16 indicate a 2 percent drop in Mexican students from the prior year, countering the growth trend reported in this study. This suggests that the growth of Mexican students seen in the 2014/15 academic year may not have been sustained in 2015/16, but a full picture of these trends are not yet available. Regarding the student flows in the reverse direction – from the United States to Mexico – Open Doors 2016 reports a six-percent increase in study abroad for academic 5 credit in 2014/15. While this growth rate is lower than the prior year’s high growth of nineteen percent, it does indicate that U.S. student interest in Mexico continues to grow.