WORLD BEAT.

This article reports that according to a new report released by UNESCO, university students from sub-Saharan Africa are the most mobile in the world. "Global Education Digest 2006" reports that one out of every 16 of sub-Saharan students goes abroad for college. North American college students are the least mobile, with just one in 250 going abroad to study. The United States may send proportionally few students abroad, but it also plays host to the largest share--23 percent--of what UNESCO used to call foreign students and now refers to as mobile students. In 1999, 1.75 million students pursued higher education outside their home countries. By 2004 that figure had risen to 2.5 million. The report notes that the increase should be seen in the context of an overall explosion in higher education, concentrated largely in China, from roughly 92 million to 132 million students. The UNESCO report brings a new perspective to student mobility by looking at the phenomenon from the point of view of the countries that send students abroad. It gives a more complete picture of what proportion of the population is enrolled in higher education and where.