Lost in translat

IMHO, many of the foreign exchange programs outise English speaking countries are not only financial but also academic rip-offs, the problem being that most American students are not linguisticall able to follow the best courses in the native language. The D of a friend from GW spent a semester at Sciences Po, Paris, probably the most elite school nowadays in France. However, although paying full tuition at GW, she had to find and pay for food and board in Paris and mainly attended "special courses" where the vast majority of students were American, which meant that she spent too much time "hanging out" with them. She loved Paris of course, but when we went over the recap of the semester, it became clear that reading 5 books and working for 2 months as an au-pair in France would have been much much cheaper and have improved her French far more. I agree whole-heartedly with the posters who say that a master's degree abroad, paying the institution's normal (even if somewhat inflated) fees is vastly preferable. I also agree with Marite about most colleges' policy of making it difficult to graduate a semester early, thus allowing students to spend this time abroad, keeping in mind that many of them would certainly find paid internships in their field.

ses

marite -

Very few graduating US seniors are qualified to go to Oxford. Because of the difference between British A-Levels and the US's system, a kid would have to have taken a significant number of APs (and gotten scores of 4/5 on them) in order to be considered, the one exception being the IB curriculum, but that is infintely less popular in the States than AP.

We can hem and haw as much as we like about how the grass is greener across the Atlantic, but the reality is that the number of kids who would be able to complete their entire undergrad education overseas (and for this I'm really only counting the UK because very few kids have the language proficiency right out of high school to study, full time in a foreign language university) is very small.

Tack on the cost of plane tickets and the higher cost of living and even that tiny little fraction haven't saved much.


The poster above me has pointed out that many study abroad programs are not integrated into the larger universities. The American kids take classes with other American kids, have their own advising and student affairs staff, etc. THAT is where the extra money goes.

marite

SES

I know all that about Oxford, thanks for the lecture. I have lived in England for five years and was quite involved in the academic life there, though not at Oxford. The point has nothing to do with admission; it has to do with the cost of studying at a foreign university. Top universities around the world are less expensive than top and not so top American universities.

As for study abroad programs, they vary greatly in the support they provide for their students abroad., and how much they let their students integrate with the broader community in the foreign university. I made note of that in an earlier post in case you missed it.

From post 40:
From post 50:
But whether they provide extra support or not, they still charge the same amount of tuition to their students, namely the tuition they charge to students who stay on campus. For my S, who did not get any extra support, the difference was $8k.

mini

"None of the elements in your reply changes the fact that when Smith charges a full paying parent the Smith tuition for a lower price program aboard, the school is taking advantage of one set of parents."

Nice try, Xiggi, but you still didn't respond to the "rip-off" involved when one set of parents whose charge is an English major subsidizes all those high-tech engineering thingees and the students who use em. The nerve of it! Why, if they wanted that, they should have gone to Harvey Mudd! (and left the CmC's of the world to those who think engineers are people who drive coal-fired choo-choos.)

I believe this conversation could be more useful if it explored the question of "value-added". I think there are foreign study programs that, at their listed prices (not what the home college charges) are rip-offs, even though they are much cheaper than others. That's where the real rip-off is.

As noted, I'm of the sleeping bag and knapsack persuasion. When I taught medieval art and philosophy at UChicago many, many moons ago, I managed to persuade two of the best students to drop out of school for a year, get a copy of Jansson, a sleeping back, and knapsack, and write me about what they saw. The ripoff was not the foreign study program, but paying the then equivalent of $45k a year to listen to me on the south side of Chicago.

Others will feel differently of course. Folks paying $45k a year can afford it (yes, I know there's plenty of bellyaching, but if they couldn't afford it their kids wouldn't be there). So once you've come to the conclusion you can afford it (and let everyone else know it), it comes back to the "value-added" question.

xiggi

Mini, I'd be happy to discuss the "rip-off" of engineering programs at LACs, and evaluate the added value of programs such as the one founded with the endowment of $7 million by Dr. Harvey Picker at Smith.

However, wouldn't my repartee be more a propos in the thread you labeled as "Good Article on Women's Engineering Program." That may be a better place to mixing sarcasm and extoling the values of Smith offerings, even via oblique references.

Good Article on Women's Engineering Program

Fwiw, I think I can accept that the JYA at private facilities abroad might cost more than others. But was that an issue debated here? If equity and "equality" was such a concern why NOT charge the exact costs of offering the various programs? At my school, students who opt for a very expensive program (namely Oxford) receive the bill of that program. And so do the student who opt for a cheaper program in Latin America or the Far East.

In the case of Smith why do students who seek to increase their mastery of Spanish in a program in Puebla or other Mexican universities have to pay more than the stated value of the program? Is it the sole justification that the programs in Paris, Hamburg, Geneva, and Florence need the financial support of ... all students traveling abroad? Or is it an incentive to be part of the subsidized programs? However, what if one choice of language happens to be Spanish as opposed to German, French, or Italian? Isn't there more to the Smith Study Abroad program than the four private offerings in Western Europe?

There is a huge difference between a school allocating its income and endowment resources and playing games with the finances of parents for the sole reason ... the school can! Again, anyone could and should applaud the fact that Smith has bent backwards to make your daughter's experience unique at Smith and ... abroad, and that her combination of merit and need-based aid reduced the net cost to a trivial or laughable matter.

anxiousmom

Marite: from the Oxford link you posted. Maybe that accounts for the difference in costs between what you found and the other poster. England is majorly expensive for living and food expenses - plus travel, plus other costs; ouch!

marite

I think that's the discussion Harvard had as it encouraged its student to study abroad: whether to give them so much support that they were in an American cocoon and were limited in their interactions with local society or let them find their own programs, including non-academic ones that would not only integrate them better in the host institution but might serve their needs better. For example, a student interested in cultural tourism and ethnic minorities might be better off at Yunnan University than at Beida. A student I knew a long time ago spent his semester abroad on an archeological dig and came back to write about the politics of archeology. But he could do so because he had Advanced Standing. At my S1's LAC, that is not available, so students on JYA needs to gain credits if they want to graduate on time.

Lost in translat

"So students need to gain credits if they want to graduate on time". That is the problem in a nutshell and therein lies the rip-off. Is it really necessary to go abroad to have a complete college education? Browsing through college catalogues and reading posts here on CC, I have come to the conclusion that there are dozens of great classes that every student regrets not having taken through lack of time. Why spend 25K (a semester's fees) + travel and living expenses for fewer if any stellar classes? That kind of money would be better spent during a gap year after graduation. European students tend to graduate after 3 years. In my days, it was said that American secondary education was so much lower than its European counterpart that American students needed that extra year to catch up. I can vouch for the fact that this is no longer true, and I wonder if most of the kids who are bright enough and motivated enough to benefit from JYA need to spend 4 whole years in college. Or do colleges want to extract the whole 4 years of tuition from parents who can afford it?

marite

S, who is eligible for Advanced Standing, does not want to study abroad. He wants to take more classes than he can fit in 4 years. In fact, a large percentage of students who are eligible for AS at top schools that offer that option choose to stay at their college for four years for that reason.

I once asked some Harvard students if they wanted to study abroad. One (an international) said: "I'm already abroad." Another had spent her childhood in Belgium. The others said that they preferred to spend a summer abroad. They did not want to miss their ECs or their friends and thought they were getting a terrific education as it was, so why go elsewhere?
I've noticed that the Harvard Summer school now offers more courses that are held abroad (taught by a Harvard faculty and eligible for Harvard credit). I suppose it is to get students who might otherwise be reluctant to go abroad at some point.

garland

^both mine felt the same way. D went abroad for classes during summer and backpacked for months after graduating; S will take all his courses at his home U; plenty of time to see the world later for much less money, but little chance to take all the classes he needs/wants to take at his school.

katliamom

marite, the Ivies have always been rather - hmmm - 'arrogant' comes to mind
in their attitude to JYA. H was a finalist at Yale for a high administrative position that involved oversight of study abroad & international programs. As someone who studied for 2 years at ENS in Paris, and 1 year in another French university, he was stunned to hear a Yale administrator say flat out "we don't encourage our students to study abroad; educationally, we are simply better." H laughed and asked if this man actually believed there is no better school than Yale on the entire planet, and the man said something to the effect that "basically yes." This was in the year 2000 - maybe Sept 11 changed things - but up to then, the 4-year-long Ivy cocoon was just fine for HYP and the like.

marite

I don't think I ever heard this from Harvard profs, but I heard it from students aplenty.
Lost in Translation has a very good point, though. Unless the lectures are in English, it is very likely that an American student will not get the full benefit of classes taught in another language. I know I struggled mightily during my freshman year--indeed during most of of my undergraduate years. It was not just the academic English; it was idiomatic English that threw me. Just as Americans do not speak like characters from Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, French people do not speak as if they were characters in a novel by Balzac or Flaubert.

My family and I just watched (again) Jean de Florette. I was reminded anew of the richness of colloquial and indeed regional French. Pagnol was famous for trying to evoke Provence; not the places that British expats have been buying up from Graham Greene to Peter Mayle, but the places where the accent du midi is really thick and sometimes as difficult to penetrate as a Yorkshire accent to someone who learned from the BBC.

Lost in translat

Sorry to bring up Smith again (no,I'm not going to talk about the fees!!), but I understand that apart from JYA, they also offer internships abroad during the summer in fields relevant to the chosen major, and that motivated students can also be offered fullbright scholarships. I suppose this also exists in most LACs and Ivies.

marite

At Harvard there is a program called the Weismann fellowship programs that funds undergraduate internships abroad for a semester, a summer, or a full year. I know one young woman who spent her fellowship year in Mongolia and Japan. There are also summer fellowships which many students use to do research for their senior thesis.

Lost in translat

IMO, students tempted by JYA or equivalent should ask themselves the following questions:
1- What am I missing by leaving my school
2- Is there any way I can acquire the same experience more cheaply
3- How vital is this at this particular moment of my academic life
4- Do I have enough data about the sister school/ program, preferably from students who have been there to judge the value of the exchange
5- How likely is it that I should be offered a better deal (i.e. scholarship or internship) at a later date that would make this redundant
AND FINALLY 6- Have I been watching " L'Auberge Espagnole" (can't remember the English title) lately