Students who worry about cost commit to study abroad less often, but they look at it almost as often as everyone else. In the Via 2026 Market Report, 39.8% of students who flagged cost when they signed up reached a recorded commitment, against 60.3% who didn't. Yet 83.1% of these students that expressed cost as a concern recorded a first action (a click in the platform that expressed interest in a certain program), against 86.7% of students who didn't express cost as a concern.
The gap opens one step later. Of students who took the first action, 86.8% of cost-concerned started an application, against 97.8% of everyone else. That 11-point gap is the largest at any single stage, and it falls exactly where looking turns into applying. That matters for when an office brings up cost.
Cost is the most common concern students record at signup, and it is linked to far fewer students committing, but only slightly fewer students looking. Among all 52,852 students active on the platform in the 2025 to 2026 academic year, 63.5% flagged cost, ahead of planning time (47.2%), housing (46.5%), academic credit (44.3%) and getting accepted (37.0%).
A 2025 student survey points the same way. In a 2025 survey of 275 college students reported by Inside Higher Ed, 80% said insufficient funds would prevent them from studying abroad. That is a measure of what students expect. The Via report connects each student's answer at signup to at least twelve months of what that student did next.
The more useful finding is about timing: the gap between the two groups is small at the start and opens at a specific step.
Yes. 83.1% of cost-flaggers recorded a first action, against 86.7% of everyone else. That is a gap of 3.6 points.
The report's own summary of these students: “They browse. They save programs. They look.” Concern about money shows up in the data before it shows up as a drop. That leaves a window to reach them.
At the application stage. Here are the report's stage-by-stage rates for 11,827 students who flagged cost and 8,382 who didn't:
|
Stage |
Flagged cost |
Did not |
Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Recorded a first action |
83.1% |
86.7% |
3.6 pts |
|
Action to application start |
86.8% |
97.8% |
11.0 pts |
|
Application start to submission |
78.3% |
88.6% |
10.3 pts |
|
Submission to commitment |
70.5% |
80.3% |
9.8 pts |
|
End to end |
39.8% |
60.3% |
20.5 pts |
Among students who didn't flag cost and took a first action, nearly all went on to start an application: 97.8%. Among cost-flaggers, 86.8% did. The stage gap grows from 3.6 points to 11 at the moment browsing becomes applying.
The gaps stay near ten points at every stage after that. Each one compounds the last, which is how a 3.6-point difference at the start becomes 20.5 points by the end.
This is the obvious objection. Maybe students who worry about anything do worse at everything, and cost is just the most common worry.
The report looks at it with three groups of students:
|
Group |
Students |
Reached commitment |
|---|---|---|
|
Flagged no concerns |
4,882 |
64.0% |
|
Other concerns, but not cost |
3,500 |
55.3% |
|
Cost, with or without other concerns |
11,827 |
39.8% |
Students with concerns other than money committed 8.7 points less often than students with no concerns. Students who named cost committed another 15.5 points less often than that.
If general worry explained everything, the second and third groups would look alike. They don't. The cost group can include students with other concerns as well, so some of the difference may come from students carrying more worries at once. The test doesn't isolate cost, but the report's reading is that general worry alone is not enough to explain the gap.
It cannot tell you that cost causes students to drop out. As the report puts it, “A clear sequence is not a cause.” This is an association.
Students who flag cost may differ from other students in ways the platform cannot see, such as financial aid and family circumstances. Any of those could drive part of the gap. The accurate statement is that students who named cost committed less often.
Nor can it tell you which fix works. In the report's words: “Nothing here identifies which intervention would change an individual student’s outcome.” Treat the method below as something to test with your own students.
The report also draws on de-identified, aggregated activity from Via's platform, and it is not a nationally representative sample.
Before the application.
The report calls a student's day-one cost concern “one of the strongest early signals in this report of whether they will reach a recorded commitment.” That signal arrives at signup. The largest single step in the gap comes later, at application start.
If your cost messaging, scholarship deadlines and funding workshops reach students once they have already started applying, the stage data suggests that is one step later than it needs to be, because by then the largest single gap has already opened.
Here is the method we would recommend testing, in order:
However your office finds out which students worry about cost, the goal is the same: know before they apply. With Intake turned on in Via Global, students can flag cost the day they create an account. Without it, a first advising appointment, an info session sign-up or a two-question survey can surface the same answer.
Then make your first real cost conversation happen while they’re still browsing, and track whether more cost-flaggers start an application. The full stage-by-stage analysis is in the report.