Prior to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, South African tertiary education institutions were relatively isolated from the growing global flow of students around the world. Over the past five years this has changed significantly. For example, between 1996 and 1997 the number of students from the United States spending a semester abroad in South Africa increased by 49 percent to a total of 617 students, making South Africa the most popular destination in Africa. By 1999, the University of Cape Town (UCT) alone, one of 21 universities in South Africa, welcomed 205 semester-study-abroad students, 145 of them from the United States.