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THE PRICE OF STUDYING ABROAD
By Tiana Steward
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Nov. 28---Want to expand your horizons? Live a dream? Want the world to be your campus? Well the world can be your campus; with more than 6,000 Study Abroad programs in over 100 countries, anywhere in the world can be a place to call your campus for a semester.
According to the Marist Abroad Program web-site, “Marist International Programs (MIP) is dedicated to providing students the opportunity to study abroad through the Marist Abroad Program (MAP). The MAP coordinates all abroad programs at Marist College, allowing students, faculty and staff to participate in international programs.”
MAP has been in place for as long as 40 years. The MAP offers students the opportunity to experience, learn and understand different cultures as a part of their academic criteria.
“The MAP is designed to give students the opportunity to participate actively in another culture by attending a foreign university and interacting with a host culture and society on a personal level. Students will not only advance their academic careers, but have a chance to expand their sense of what constitutes ‘international,’ to experience the day-to-day adventures of living in a foreign country, and to learn how others from different cultures interact with their world,” according to the Marist Abroad web-site.
Living and taking classes in another country and experiencing another culture can help students to open up their eyes to the different worldviews that living within one culture can blind them differences of the cultures. Studying aboard can help students to expand cultural sensitivity and understanding.
“Marist International Programs is offering 15 short-term programs for 2007-08. These programs offer students the opportunity to go abroad for during winter intersession, spring break or spring attachment (May-June),” according to the Marist Abroad web-site.
For some students, studying abroad for a semester, or maybe even a year, cannot fit into their academic schedule or they no longer have the core classes to do it. But Marist offers short-term programs that are three to four weeks in length. Yet according to a N.Y. Times article on Nov. 4 the amount of hand-holding and walking threw the abroad process is up to the student. If they don’t need much, then studying abroad can be done for less.
Financial aid is the biggest factor in meeting the expenses of studying abroad. Studying abroad through many schools does not cost more than a semester’s tuition. Many of the colleges offer programs that will cost the same, as if studying on campus. All federal aid can be used to also study abroad.
“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,” according to the same N.Y. Times article.
Even though there are cheaper ways to study abroad, most colleges do not recommend that students do that. Colleges recommend their students not study abroad through pre-packaged programs because of how credits transfer and for some major safety issues.
“It has to do with the academic integrity of a program,” said Jerre Thornton, Coordinator of International Programs at Marist College. “The academic integrity to know what courses will be taken, because they have to match what is taken here at Marist,” said Thornton.
According to a N.Y. Times article, the risk of going to study abroad through outside programs comes with the odds of forfeiting financial aid and course credit. Students will also have to get their own visa, register for courses and know the ones that need to be taken that will match up with the school’s credit system. Students will also have to get the foreign universities to send transcripts on time because academic calendars are not the same, which could cause students to miss the start of their own semester.
Brian J. 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, “They better have a pretty good reason, because we run our own program in France and we want to protect our program,” he told the N.Y. Times.
Thornton said that Marist works with its students and tries to help them find programs for the places they want to go abroad to. If the abroad program has to start a new program, they will. They work with the students, so that they can go virtually anywhere. When a student wants to go outside of the colleges offering programs, all the student has to do is get an okay from MAP; we might actually be able to help.
Carl Good, director of undergraduate studies in Spanish at Indiana University Bloomington, says that too many students don’t take pre-approval seriously. “What’s happening, is a lot of students are finding their own study-abroad programs, and they come back without having spoken to anyone at the university,” he said to a N.Y. Times reporter. 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-abroader’s must “shop around” in other departments for credit based on the course content. He advises students to keep the syllabus and academic work to show what you’ve done.
A semester, a year, a summer, or even three weeks, will change a student’s life. Take advantage of all the resources that are available and ask the abroad staff questions before finding a cheaper program in a foreign country to study abroad from which, the credits might not transfer. If you want the world to be your campus, as a student, you have the access you need to do that, so use it.