The numbers of U.S. students traveling abroad to study continued to grow in 2005, increasing 8.5 percent over the previous year, with much of the expansion taking place in such nontraditional destinations as China, Ecuador, and Argentina. According to the Institute of International Education, which tracks the figures in its annual "Open Doors" report, Western Europe remained the most popular destination for students enrolled in American colleges. The top four choices were Britain, Italy, Spain, and France, drawing 95,670 of the 223,534 students who spent time abroad. Those countries' numbers grew modestly from a year earlier, however, while the number of students going to China rose by 38 percent and to Argentina by 42 percent. Trips of eight weeks or less also continued to rise in popularity, taken by 9.5 percent of students who studied abroad, up from 8 percent a year earlier. Only 5.3 percent of students spent an entire academic year away from their campuses. Thirty-seven percent chose a summer term abroad, and nearly 37 percent left for a semester. The trend toward shorter trips is driven by a broad desire among educators to see more students spend at least a portion of their college careers outside the United States. Educators are troubled by the fact that even as the number of study-abroad students has risen steadily, the percentage of all college students who go abroad remains very low. (Contains 1 table.)