Traditional college summer study trips replete with museum outings and European cultural forays are getting some competition from more exotic locales.

While the usual European trips — including Spain, France and Italy — still top the list of favorites, a national study of destinations shows places like Malaysia, Ghana and Israel climbing in popularity among college students.

Interest grew by 80 percent in Malaysia in the last semester and by about 40 percent in Ghana, according to StudyAbroad.com, a national clearinghouse for study abroad programs.

Locally, University of Utah students are also branching out to more unusual locales to spend their summer breaks. The top two study abroad spots last year were Chile and England, but programs like a medical trip to Ghana and an Arabic language program in Egypt just came on board and are attracting students, said Sara Demko, assistant director for study abroad.

The Ghana trip, for example, had 15 participants last year and is expected to have double that many students this year.

Many of those new programs have just started in the past two years in response to student demand and a growing recognition that students should be traveling to other places than Europe, Demko said.

"I think they're getting a different kind of experience, maybe a more intense experience," she said. "Certainly you can learn a lot by going to Europe, but most students don't understand the history of colonization or the role the U.S. plays on a global scale. It's mostly seen in these developing countries."

Chad Wasden, a U. medical student, chose the Ghana trip last year to study the spread and treatment of malaria in small villages throughout the country. Wasden's group found that roughly 75 percent of the villages' inhabitants had some stage of malaria and had simply learned to live with it.

"That was pretty shocking. They bring some of these kids in that are nearly dead with malaria, and I just kind of watched how they treated them," Wasden said.

Observing the medical treatment of such massive numbers with primitive tools helped Wasden better understand Third World medicine, he said.

"They pretty much did the same thing we do here, but without any high-tech equipment," he said. "The medicine was the same, but it was kind of make do with what you have."

Wasden said he picked the African destination because he's always wanted to go, but was "too big a chicken" to go alone. The sponsored trip, however, let him see the country while staying at a local university and traveling with group guides who knew the area.

"I always think it's good to step out of the United States. We get a little bit brainwashed here that America can do no wrong and we're the best," he said.