<p>Yesterday's WSJ had an article about colleges changing rules for study abroad. Over the past several years, the number of students studying abroad has sharply increased. US colleges are feeling the monetary pinch of simultaneously losing the income from their students for a semester, but continuing to pay their scholarships. </p>
<p>To resolve the problem, some colleges are limiting the number of students permitted to study abroad. Others are limiting the numbers going abroad by term. (The spring term is the most popular term for study abroad.) Some colleges are imposing extra fees. Those of you who have children who plan to study abroad may want to read the article.</p>
<p>This doesn't make sense - Study Abroad is typically organized so that American students pay their school for a regular semester, and then their school pays the tuition at their hosted school, which is usually much, much cheaper than US tuition. The big scandal is for the Ivy league students every year, who go to countries like Germany and discover they are paying Harvard rates, while the Canadians and English kids are paying their own heavily discounted rates for the same program, and some students are paying the host institution directly, and only paying a few hundred a semester.</p>
<p>So: if a semester program at a German University is $500 - The Harvard Students participating paid Harvard their $15,000 for a semester, *the UToronto students paid Toronto $2500 USD for the same experience, and students from other EU schools paid $500. Study Abroad is a money maker.</p>
<p>Actually, that is not the typical arrangement. At most schools, you pay for study abroad independent of the home college's tuition. You can typically apply for financial aid, but it is based on the cost of the study abroad program.</p>
<p>I think it's pretty common among small LAC's that students pay only their transportation costs for abroads. For my daughters study abroad she's actually paying LESS then the cost of the flight ($200 round trip St. Louis to Lima, Peru out of pocket) and her regular tuition, room and board will cover the trip. The college managed to use unused money from another study abroad to cover a portion of the airline tickets. At her college the professors go with the students and teach on-site. I've also heard similar costs from a couple of other colleges that son has been accepted at.</p>
<p>Swarthmore does it that way, too. You just pay normal tuition and the college pays all the deposits, all the program costs, all the transportation, etc., whether it is a Swarthmore program or not.</p>
<p>But, in looking around, that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.</p>
<p>We pay our daughter's tuition to Columbia while she is abroad. Her travel to/from Paris was our responsibility and she pays her rent directly to her host family. Columbia has an agency in Paris that helps with living arrangements. Students can opt to live with a family or choose from apartment or bed-sitter situations. They can choose a price range to work within.</p>
<p>At Rice you pay study-abroad directly to the company you study abroad with (or foreign university), and Rice remits any financial aid you get directly to you. The only additional cost is a $250. study abroad fee. There are also lots of scholarships directly from Rice for study abroad. My DD didn't apply for any; since we have need-based financial aid (along with merit aid) there would be no net gain for her. Rice does adjust your financial aid package to reflect the true costs of the program. (Most of the programs cost less than Rice's tuition,room and board.) For full-pay students, this means that study abroad usually costs LESS than staying in country - so I'm glad that Rice handles it this way. DD is going to Chile - was going to be Ecuador, but at the last minute she decided to switch. :)</p>
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More and more schools seem to demand US tuition payment even when foreign school would be much cheaper--seems very unfair to me.
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<p>They do it, in part, because it's a way to include low-income financial aid students in study abroad programs. For a student who is on a full scholarship, study abroad requires nothing whatsoever beyond simply applying to the program. The entire financial process continues automatically with no additional effort or complication or up-front cash outlay, whatsoever. Colleges went to this system to extend study abroad beyond its traditional "rich-kid in Europe" foundation.</p>
<p>This approach can be quite progressive, however. If you are a full-fare customer, the study abroad program might be cheaper outside of the college channels. Therefore, these customers are definitely subsidizing study abroad for low-income scholarship students. I know that some Swarthmore students in this situation just take a semester off to do their study abroad and don't even bother with trying to transfer the credits. In other cases, this system can be an advantage. My daughter's study abroad program next semester is more expensive than tuition, room, and board at Swarthmore. </p>
<p>Actually, many of the study abroad programs are priced comparably to top colleges in the US -- something that surely is not a coincidence. You can kind of tell what customers a study abroad program is targeting by its price tag.</p>
<p>Study abroad programs may be high-priced, but applying directly to many universities in Europe to be a guest student for one year is much cheaper than U.S. tuition costs. Also the dichotomy between poor scholarship students vs. rich full cost students is not so extreme. There are middle class families (like mine) who just miss qualifiying for need-based aid but where four years of private college make a serious hole in savings for retirement. Many college also use the absent JYA places to accept mid-year freshmen and so are getting double tuition along with the missing room and board payments of the absent student.
It does not seem fair to pay full freight for services you are not using. I</p>