This article is part of a series of posts written by NAFSA Global Partners. These institutions represent a broad range of perspectives, develop innovative approaches that enrich the field, and bring a wealth of expertise to the international education community. This post was provided by Via TRM, where Nicole Neese is marketing manager.
For decades, the Open Doors report has been the study abroad profession’s closest thing to a primary data source. The report allows us to track participation at scale; how deans and provosts understand their institution's global engagement footprint; and how our field talks about who goes abroad, where students go, and how many students participate.
Open Doors deserves its status as the field’s essential source of information. The data are rigorous, the sample is deep, and the field is better for having this resource.
But the report is built to tell a specific story.
Open Doors measures results. It tells us who participated at the end of a cycle. Survey-based reporting at that scale takes time, which is why the data that reach your desk are typically one to two years old. That’s not a flaw; it’s what makes Open Doors reliable.
The problem is the story that Open Doors can't tell.
The Decision That Happens Before the Application
By the time a student applies to a study abroad program, the most important part of the decision-making process is already behind them: The months of browsing. The comparisons. The conversations with advisers. The late-night web research. The costs googled. The moment the student decided to go for a specific program—or to walk away from another.
That discovery window is where most of the participation gap between who applies and who doesn’t can be found. And until now, no one has been able to see inside this gap at scale.
Study abroad offices know when advising gets busy, when applications ramp up, and who finishes the process. What they can’t see is the population that never shows up in those numbers at all. The students who raised their hand, browsed for weeks, then drifted. The ones who stalled for reasons the office never heard.
They disappear in the gap.
What the data can tell us
The 2026 Via Insights Market Report tracks student behavior from the moment a student creates an account in their university’s study abroad platform. That first action is a signal: A student has raised their hand. Every click, session, comparison, and period of dormancy that follows is a data point that was never previously visible to the office advising the student.
Let’s be clear about scope: This data collection begins at account creation. Many students think about studying abroad but never get to the point of starting an account. Important conversations happen in classrooms and dorms that never appear in this data set. That’s not the story we’re telling here.
The story we’re telling is what happens inside the window that follows: how long it lasts, where drop-offs cluster, which students make it through, and which ones an office could have reached if anyone had known to look.
Via previewed early findings from the report at the NAFSA 2026 Annual Conference & Expo in Orlando, sparking a new, dynamic conversation in the field, which is exactly what this kind of data should do.
The full report will be released late July. Join the waitlist to be the first to receive Via Insights Market Report 2026.
Nearly 80 percent of incoming college students say they want to study abroad, yet most of them won't. That gap has existed for as long as we've measured it, and narrowing the gap has been a quiet ambition of this field ever since.
Open Doors stands at the finish line of study abroad and counts who crossed it. That information is essential to our field.
Via Insights stands at the starting line, looking at what happens to the students who never get there—and asking why.
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