In many parts of the world, college is cheap.
An international student enrolling at the University of Bologna in Italy pays US$1,740 a year in tuition and fees. Through Indiana University, enrollees who are not part of a direct exchange (about half of participants) pay an academic fee of US$20,200.
At Peking University in Beijing, tuition for a year under the auspices of Boston College comes to US$35,150. The published rate for international students is US$3,420.
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Program organizers are quick to tick off support services that make up a big part of the cost difference: cultural outings, security briefings, orientation programs, on-site staff to help get credits transmitted and sort out visa problems. Will someone translate at the doctor's office? Is there a driver?
How much hand-holding and service students want is an individual matter. If you don't need much, can study abroad be done for less? Absolutely.
DON'T LEAVE HOME wITHOUT aid
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
For most students, financial aid is the biggest factor in affording study abroad. Government grants and loans can usually travel with a student, but colleges are less generous with the aid from their own coffers.
According to a study published last month of about 100 institutions and study-abroad organizations by the Forum on Education Abroad, an association of program providers and colleges based at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 74 percent of colleges let students apply need-based institutional aid to programs they run themselves; 61 percent to approved programs operated by others. For example, Goucher College, which requires its students to study abroad, withholds institutional aid if a student chooses a program it doesn't run. (Students do get a US$1,200 voucher no matter what.)
The practice encourages students to choose programs that are run or supported by their college. So does the widespread requirement that students pay their college's regular tuition and fees, even if the program's price tag is far less. Only 35 percent of colleges let students pay a program provider directly, according to the forum study.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Brown put the policy into effect last year: if you want credit from Brown, you pay Brown tuition. The idea is that the cost to students is the same, whether they are in Paris or Delhi or Providence, Rhode Island, but living expenses, including room and board, are not. Those come to an estimated US$10,200 for a semester in Paris and US$5,400 in India. Room and board for a semester at Brown costs US$4,800.
For students covering their own food and housing expenses, the sinking US dollar has hurt. Boston University estimates US$10,500 in personal expenses for its yearlong program at Keio University in Tokyo, for a total of US$57,844 when housing, airfare and other expenditures are added. Several students interviewed say the living expenses they budgeted for were off - in some cases by thousands of dollars - leaving them to radically economize, ask parents to send money, or draw down bank accounts.
Alexandria Hollett, an Indiana University senior who studied last year in Bologna, says that with room and board, she spent about US$6,000 more than she had anticipated, or about US$28,000. Today, she says, "I am working two jobs as well as being a full-time student because I have no money."
Rick Vaz, dean of interdisciplinary and global studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, says the weakening dollar has made cost "a significant barrier" for some of his students. On top of regular tuition and fees of US$34,830, WPI charges about US$3,500 to US$7,500, depending on the destination, to cover housing, board and airfare for a seven-week program. Vaz plans to make financial aid for study abroad a big focus of a coming fund-raising campaign.
ONE WAY TO SAVE: SEAT FOR SEAT
Exchange agreements, which allow students at an American university and at a foreign university to literally trade places, tend to be cheaper, because colleges aren't sacrificing a tuition-paying student for the semester. Participants in Indiana's Bologna program who are part of an exchange - luckily - pay US$8,450 a year if they are state residents and US$16,900 otherwise, a saving of about US$12,000 or US$3,000 on Indiana's standard academic fee. For its exchange program with the University of Ghana, state residents will pay US$4,725 and nonresidents US$9,450 to cover tuition, orientation and health insurance for the 2008 spring semester (cheapest route: international students enrolling on their own pay US$1,750 a semester).
On a broader scale, the International Student Exchange Program, a group of 275 colleges in 39 countries, lets students pay room and board at home and essentially switch with students abroad; 2,400 students did this during the 2006 to 2007 academic year.
George Dennison, past chairman of the program and president of the University of Montana, says that while host schools don't offer cultural outings or special programs, a staff member does make sure students register for classes and find housing.
The point, he says, is to let them live on their own in the different cultural milieu, because that's how they will learn the most.
OVERSEAS PROTECTIONISM
Brian Whalen, president of the Forum on Education Abroad and executive director of the Office of Global Education at Dickinson College, says colleges don't want to give credit for programs that compete with their own - 36 percent never do, and 39 percent only sometimes do, according to his group's findings. If students want to go to Paris on a non-Dickinson program, he says, "They better have a pretty good reason, because we run our own program in France and we want to protect our program."
When going outside a college's offerings, get an OK in advance. Stephanie Brockman, who majors in Arabic and Islamic studies at Yale, wanted to study in Oman on a program run by the nonprofit SIT Study Abroad that was not sanctioned by Yale. Brockman credits an "epic e-mail" endorsement from a professor for sealing the approval she needed.
Carl Good, director of undergraduate studies in Spanish at Indiana University Bloomington, says that too many students don't take preapproval seriously. "What's happening," he says, "is a lot of students are finding their own study-abroad programs, and they come back without having spoken to anyone at the university." A third of the study-abroad courses he reviews for credit in the Spanish department are from returnees who hadn't gotten approval in advance. On average, he awards two courses' worth of credit for a semester in Spanish-language countries, so rogue study-abroaders must "shop around" in other departments for credit based on the course content.
Getting credit toward general education requirements is easier than getting credits in advanced courses toward a major, even in college-approved programs. Kevin LeShane, a University of Connecticut senior with a dual major in journalism and physiology/neurobiology, says that by the time he applied and was accepted into the university's Florence program in spring 2006, he had finished his general education requirements. That meant no study-abroad credits could count toward graduation. He couldn't justify going.
"I was disappointed," he says. "I definitely would have done it if I'd thought about it freshman year."
The takeaway message is to plan early, at least a year in advance and maybe more, depending on your major.
DO IT YOURSELF
How to tell a well-thought-out program from one with a well-designed Web presence but little substance? The Forum on Education Abroad is staking out some guideposts. In May, the organization articulated standards of good practice, and it is in the midst of reviewing offerings of 12 campuses and program providers, on matters from safety to help for students in transferring credits. "It's akin to an accreditation process," says Whalen. He expects results of the review to be out by spring, and that those winning forum approval will advertise that fact.
Generations of students have decided to forgo prepackaged programs altogether and have left their American institutions to enroll in foreign ones on their own. Some colleges allow a leave of absence and accept the transfer of some credits. At New York University, about 70 of the 2,000 students who go abroad on semester programs do it that way, according to Yaw Nyarko, its vice provost for globalization and multicultural affairs.
The risk of going it alone, of course, is the possibility of forfeiting financial aid and course credit. Further, you have to get your own visa, register for courses (and know which ones to take) and get foreign universities, some of them notoriously lax, to send back the transcripts. Since academic calendars don't necessarily align, you could miss the start of your next semester, too.
Carl Herrin, a study-abroad consultant and lobbyist in Maryland, says students who can do it on their own are rare. "You would pick them out in a group of their peers for their independence, self-discipline and planning," he says. "They have a real clear vision of what they want to do."
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