Language travel on the decline in Sweden – Spain and Japan are the most popular destinations
Swedish students love to study abroad and for many years language schools in Europe were crowded with Swedish students, but that is not the case anymore. Now we have received the latest statistics for the academic year 2016/2017 from the government funding agency CSN. From this we can conclude that the numbers continue to go down, but at least Spain get some positive news.
Language travel on the decline
15 years ago it was incredibly popular for Swedish students to take a language course abroad after finishing high school. Over 27% of all Swedish students studying abroad at the time studied at language schools. Since then, the number has fallen considerably, and now only 10% of all Swedish study abroad students attend language courses. The number of language students with government support from CSN has dropped from 7377 in 2001/2002 to an all-time low of 2644 students in the 2016/2017 academic year.
The decline has been biggest in Europe where the number of Swedish language travel students has decreased by 80% over the past 15 years. This year's biggest losers were the UK and France both reaching their lowest number this century with 223 and 257 Swedish language students supported by CSN.
Spain is back on top as the most popular country
For many years Spain was the most popular destination for Swedish language travelers. A relaxing lifestyle and sunny weather kept the Swedes coming. However, like the rest of the European market, Spain has faced a big decline over the last 15 years and now has less than 20% of the students it had 15 years ago. However, the last academic year numbers have gone up, and with 611 students Spain was the most popular country for Swedish language travel students during 2016/2017. This was the highest number of Swedish language students to Spain since the academic year 2011/2012 when 714 students studied there.
Japan has most student weeks
Japan has gone against the trend in Sweden and grown a lot in popularity over the last ten years. So much so that Japan has been the most popular destination for Swedish language students over the past three academic years. However, this year the number of students fell from 531 to 416, which meant that they did not have a chance against Spain. But looking at the number of student weeks Japan is still in the lead with 9194 weeks, compared to Spain's 6843.
The US on the rise
Until mid-2015 Swedish students could not get CSN-funding for studying European languages outside of Europe. Once this rule changed, the US started to grow rapidly as a language travel destination for Swedish students mainly at the expense of England which has decreased almost as much. With 287 students, the United States is the third most popular country for Swedish language travel students the past academic year.
Learn more at ICEF Berlin
If you want to learn more about the Swedish study abroad market you are welcome to attend our seminar How to Attract Swedish Students and Get Funding from CSN which take place in the room Tegel at the ICEF Berlin workshop on Sunday October 29 at 17.30.
Johan Asplund
CEO
+46 76 913 19 18
pr@dreamstudies.se
DreamStudies is a Sweden based company that help students with free information about studying abroad. Here we will primarily share news and trends from the study abroad industry. At our main English website DreamStudiesAbroad.com we write articles and guides about studying abroad. We have a scholarship that students can apply for, and we have an international school database with thousands of schools. We also run ChristmasCalendarOnline.com where companies can upload their own Advent Calendar online. I developed my first advent calendar online back in 2001 and since that is one of my passions so we might just share some news about advent calendars too.
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