In March, the U.S. Department of State issued a travel warning for citizens intending to visit the regions of Mexico most afflicted by drug-related violence. As a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article reports, this travel warning has led to declining numbers of American students participating in study abroad programs in Mexico.

According to the Chronicle, many U.S. universities quickly responded to the warning, in some cases by cancelling research projects, in others by warning their students against studying or even traveling to Mexico.

Yet, while the number of Americans studying in Mexico has declined significantly, students from other parts of the world, especially from Europe, are coming to Mexican cities like Monterrey in record numbers. The private University of Monterrey, for example, has seen a record number in the enrollment of foreign undergraduates despite a sharp decline in American students. As Thomas M. Buntru, the school’s international-programs director, explains,

“There are so many French, German, Dutch, and Spanish students that they have more than offset the drop that we have in Americans students.”

As to the reason for this differing behavior between U.S. and European students and universities, Buntru and other Mexican administrators assume the intense coverage of the Mexican drug war in U.S. media to be a decisive factor.

Mexican universities have adopted measures to increase security on their campuses, for example by requiring students to show identification upon entering the campus. The Mexican undersecretary of higher education, Rodolfo Tuirán, urged American universities to take a more careful look at security in Mexico before canceling programs in the country, and to be aware that many places in Mexico have not experienced drug-related violence.

"It's very complicated, and it's an issue of perception versus reality," Tuiran said.