My parents didn't let me study abroad. Claimed I'd already been to every country in Europe. I had. Really they just wanted me to not be having sex with strangers and drinking every day. Now that I realize how young and dumb I was at the time I kind of understand why they didn't let me go. I would have had sex with everyone, including women.
Anonymous wrote:Glorified tourism in almost all cases. Better off spending college learning and then do a 2-3 year stint abroad after school - teaching English, Fulbright, etc...
+1
The actual going abroad part can be fantastic, but the fees and credit workarounds schools impose on students are too much. If your child took the money they would have used to study abroad and pooled together with 2-3 friends doing the same, they could live very well in Europe/Asia for the same amount of time as a college study abroad program, not worry about classes and definitely enjoy the international experience on a grander scale!
My year abroad didn't cost any more than if I had stayed at home that year, other than the airplane ticket and some of the traveling I did during holidays.
It depends on the study abroad program. My college had "exchange" agreements with several universities, where your tuition dollars would be used to cover the cost of studying abroad (and the person from the university abroad would use their tuition fees to study in the US). However, if you went outside of these university partnerships (which were limited, maybe 10-12 total partnerships, with 2-3 of those taking place only in the summer term), prices were staggering -- for instance, going to Oxford for a year cost $52k! You could complete 2/3 of your years at Oxford as an American/overseas undergrad for the same price. And that's only the "program fees" before accounting for plane tickets, spending money, etc.
Well, yes. That is also true in the United States - if you went to e.g. Harvard instead of UMD or the SLAC where you got merit aid, it would cost more.
So what?
I think you misunderstood -- if you're at Harvard/UMD/a SLAC and they have a partnership agreement with, say, LSE, you'd pay your regular old tuition to go abroad (and the kid from LSE would pay his regular tuition to study at one of the aforementioned American schools for a year). If, instead, you wanted to go to Cambridge from Harvard/UMBD/a SLAC and your university did NOT have a partnership agreement with Cambridge, you'd end up paying much more than your tuition to study abroad. My tuition was ~$25k/year at my state school so I thought it was crazy to pay my university $52k/year (plus an application fee) to study abroad at Oxford when I could study at Oxford as a real student, and not a study abroad student, for a fraction of the cost/year.
I'd rather my kid take the $52k, enroll at Oxford as a non-degree student if that was his desire and use the remainder of the money to travel/live in a nice apartment while there/etc. Or just use the $52k to live in Europe for a year without the formal study abroad program; they money would go much further, IMO.
No, I understood perfectly. My point is, why do you feel the need to study with a partner program that is not connected to your home school? Why spend the $52K at all?
FWIW, when I studied abroad a million years ago, my expensive private school at home charged me zero, and the university I attended in Europe (through a different, also private home school partnership) charged a small fraction of what my home school tuition would have been - so much so that my year abroad cost half of what it would have cost, had I studied at my home school in the U.S.
That's exactly my point! I'm not sure why one would do that. Sorry if it wasn't clear. I guess if your kid really really REALLY wanted to go to Paris (or whatever other city the partnerships didn't offer) and you had the money to do it, why not?
No, now you aren't getting it. If the tuition for the program abroad is the same as what it is at home, then why not just go through that partner program?
RE study abroad, there are a lot of benefits and so I can't imagine NOT encouraging my kid to do it if it's an option.
B/c the partnership program's options were rather limited, at least at my school. So, it wasn't an option to simply "go wherever you want in France" for $25k/year (the annual in-state tuition) -- if you wanted to go to France for the same amount of money it would cost you to stay in the States, you could only go to Marseille. If you wanted to pay in-state tuition to study in the UK, your only option was going to Nottingham. If you wanted to study in Paris, Lille, London or Manchester (or anywhere that isn't Marseille/Nottingham), you'd have to go outside the partnership program and pay extra fees to do so. The actual place to study may matter little to someone who only wants to go abroad for the sake of going abroad, but as I said earlier, if you really want to go to Paris, you'd have to pay up. It's like if you were a student in Lyon who paid 300 euros/year to study at home and wanted to study in NYC, but your school only afforded you the option of studying at the University of Iowa for 300 euros/year. To study at NYU, it would cost you 5000 euros/ year because U Lyon and U of Iowa don't have a partnership agreement.
Ok, so you had higher priced options, and options that cost the same as a semester at your home school. And Paris is more expensive than Lille
So what? The point isn't to be in X city, it is to study abroad for a reasonable price close to what you would pay at home.
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