| Have Funds, Will Travel
By Andrew Curry
U.S. News and World Report,
August 16, 1999
Study abroad has never been
cheap, and for years, only the well-off have beenable to spend their junior
year strollingFrench boulevards or sampling German beers straight from
the breweries.But foreign study is becoming accessibleto more students,
thanks in part to changes in federal financial aid rules. As recently
as 1992, schoolsprevent students from paying for overseasstudy with their
federal grants and loans. But now eligible students on school-approved
programs are guaranteed federal aid. This means that for many students,
financing a semester abroad isnot much different from putting together
the funds to pay for school in the United States.
The number of Americans
studying abroad in the past decade has doubled to over 100,000
annually, according to the Institute of International Education,
based in New York City. This rise reflects a growing awareness of the value
of international education. "Institutions have realized it's a global economy,
and they're vested in finding ways to helpstudents fund study abroad,"
says SusanPugh, director of student financial assistance at Indiana University
in Bloomington.
No frill.
As foreign study increasinglyis
viewed as a fundamental rather than a frill, the European jaunt is losing
popularity. In 1989, 77 percent of students studied in Europe; by 1997
that figure had dropped to 65 percent, with more students visiting Latin
America and Asia.
The cornerstone
of most school's aid packages for overseas study is federal Title IV assistance–the
same Higher Education Act loans and grants students get as part of
their regular financial aid packages. For federal aid to cover study abroad,
a student's homeinstitution must approve the program and agree to accept
academic credit for coursework. The government leaves the approval of programs
to schools.
Most schools that
put an emphasis on study abroad let their students pay for overseas schooling
with grants they've received from their college. The University of Colorado-Boulder,
for instance, allows students to apply need-based grants and other
forms ofinstitutional aid to any school-approved,overseas programs.
Other colleges,
however, placerestrictions on the amount of institutional aid going overseas.
Ohio's Antioch College lets students pay for Antioch-sponsored programs
with grantsfrom the school but limits the number of students abroad at
any one time. "We can't have so many students going abroadthat we don't
have enough tuition to keep the school running," notes Antioch Director
of Financial Aid Sandy Tarbox.
Schools like
Santa Clara University in California don't let students take institutional
aid abroad but do allow them to apply their grants to tuition and costs
when they return to the United States. For example, Gabriela Tablada, a
senior who is majoring in marketing, didn't get any money from Santa Clara
to study in Seville, Spain, last fall. But the financial aid office permitted
her to apply her entire $12,000 grant from Santa Clara to the cost of the
two quarters she studied on the American campus. Like a lot of other students,
Tablada took out a low-interest private loan, arranged through her financial
aid office, to help her cover the costs of her semester abroad.
In an effort
to keep students' debt burdens down, many schools work with foreign universities
to trim costs. The University of Colorado, for instance, offers its students
high-end foreign programs alongside inexpensive ones that help students
economize overseas by eliminating field trips and placing students with
local families.
Despite debt burdens,
most students who have studied abroad say they would do it again in a heartbeat.
"Don't let money be a factor in determining whether you go. I would have
paid double if I had to," says Tablada. |
