As universities expand their study abroad programs and turn to third-party providers to meet increasing demand, some fear that cozy relationships and conflicts of interest may abound under the tables of the study abroad industry - and that students may be paying the price.
The New York Times reported in August that some universities and their representatives were receiving perks and cash incentives in exchange for steering their students toward specific companies' programs, entering tacit or explicit agreements of exclusivity. By entering preferred relationships with study abroad providers, universities are said to stifle competition between providers, giving preferred companies little incentive to offer competitive pricing and leaving internationally-minded students who want credit for their foreign study no choice but to enroll in university-approved programs.
Three days following its initial article, the Times reported that New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had begun an investigation of these practices, issuing subpoenas to five major study abroad providers, four of which - the Center for Education Abroad at Arcadia University, the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, the Institute for the International Education of Students and the Institute for Study Abroad at Butler University - currently lend their services to Brown.
At Brown, "we have no exclusivity agreements whatsoever," said Kendall Brostuen, associate dean of the College and director of international programs. "We approve programs, not providers."
Brostuen said he has never received the perks and cash incentives allegedly given to study abroad officers, and he added that he would condemn such practices as unethical. But the Times also reported that university officials benefit from free or subsidized travel to program locations and memberships on provider advisory boards - both of which Brostuen said are common in the industry and take place at Brown.
Questionable practices?
When Brown students wish to study abroad and receive credit for their time off College Hill, they have three options: Brown-sponsored programs, approved third-party programs and petitioned programs. In order to ensure the quality of programs not run by the University, OIP officials are sent to schools all over the world on "familiarization visits" and "formal site reviews" to assess them for academic rigor, student support and other factors.
"I can tell you from experience, they're work," Brostuen said of the visits. "It's exhaustive, it's worthwhile, but it's not extravagant."
Andrea Lipkin, a study abroad adviser at the OIP, went on a 12-day familiarization visit last April to Chile and Ecuador through IES, one of the companies under investigation by Cuomo's office.
"We arrived and right away we were visiting institutions that the program is affiliated with," Lipkin said. "It was packed."
Lipkin said the visits are essential if the University wishes to adequately inform students making important decisions about their education.
"When a student comes and says, 'I'm interested in studying in such-and-such a place,' being able to speak from first-hand experience lets us better help students to evaluate programs based on academic fit," she said.
Arguing that the trip wasn't a ploy to woo OIP advisors, Brostuen pointed out that half the programs Lipkin assessed were not approved.
"Chile is on our approved list," he said. "Ecuador is not."
Another practice that has come into question is providers' appointment of study abroad officers to advisory board positions, intended to allow further quality control but possibly granting them further perks. Brostuen, who serves on IFSA Butler's Latin American Advisory Committee, the National Advisory Council for CEA Arcadia and the School for International Training's Partnership Council, said all his board memberships are unpaid and are usually limited to rotating terms of three or four years.
"They are completely unpaid - as they should be," he said. "The only 'perks' I get out of those positions are once-a-year dinners in American cities like Indianapolis."
"And lest anyone argue that my advisory role implies any sort of exclusivity with Brown," Brostuen wrote in an e-mail to The Herald, "of the 573 students who went abroad last year through the OIP, only six students participated in programs offered by the Institute for Study Abroad, Butler University; 18 students studied abroad on Arcadia University programs and 20 students studied abroad on SIT programs."
Weighing the options
Brostuen said he thinks the petitioning option best demonstrates that Brown is not engaged in unethical conduct with third-party providers. If students are unsatisfied with what the OIP has to offer, they can research their own programs at the schools and cities of their choice and then apply for approval. Some students say the seemingly cumbersome process deters some from applying, but students who have studied through petitioned programs say the process is easier to complete than it appears.
"We encourage students to petition," Brostuen said. "And they certainly do."
Last year, roughly 12 percent of all Brown students who studied abroad did so on programs they had petitioned themselves. But that means nearly 90 percent of students - over 500 last year - did not.
In order to petition a program to the OIP, students must submit material from the school at which they want to study, write multiple essays giving their reasons for picking that program and have an interview with a study abroad adviser simply to begin the approval process. Only after further interviews - and in some cases more than 10 faculty signatures - can a program be approved.
Leah Harrison '08 spent last spring in Spain. Though she considered petitioning her own program, Harrison said she thought it would be "too much of a hassle," so she elected to study through IES.
"It's already enough of a hassle trying to apply abroad when you're dealing with classes," she said. "Petitioning just seems like extra work."
Harrison said that among most students interested in studying abroad, the petitioning process "seems like a mess that just isn't worth it."
Giorgio DiMauro, associate director of the Office of International Programs at Harvard University, told The Herald that a greater percentage of last year's Harvard study abroad students petitioned their own programs than Brown students did.
"Last year, about 25 percent of students did apply for programs that weren't on our approved list," DiMauro said.
But DiMauro said the statistic is deceptively high because Harvard's OIP has not updated its Web site to include programs that it typically approves.
"Our Web site has a pretty restricted list so there are some programs that we know about already and would approve upon request," DiMauro said. "In reality, we're probably not far off from Brown at all."
Susanna Makela '08, an applied math concentrator who spent a semester at the University of Helsinki in Finland, petitioned her own program when she found the OIP didn't offer a program there.
"You had to write a couple essays stating why you wanted to go to that particular place and why the pre-approved programs didn't match your needs," she said. "And you had to have an interview with the OIP people."
But Makela, who is of Finnish descent, said the petitioning program was not very cumbersome.
"It was really pretty painless," she said. "And very simple."
"The number of students who petition is going up," Brostuen said. "Brown students are pretty adventurous."
Little effect on students
In the end, the primary concern of critics of the study-abroad industry is the possible effect of these practices on students. Cuomo's office hopes to discover whether undergraduates have to pay more for programs because of incentives and exclusivity deals with universities. But even if Brown did engage in these practices, it is unlikely that students would be affected.
In addition to the 30 credits needed to graduate, students are also required to pay at least eight semesters of Brown tuition, whether those semesters are spent in Providence or in Peru.
"Students, regardless of where they go abroad, are charged Brown tuition," Brostuen said. "It's taken the cost factor out of the picture."
While this policy means that inflated program costs do not affect the amount students pay, it does direct the difference between a program's price and Brown's standard tuition to the University rather than saving the student's cash.
Jessica Bloome '08, who spent last fall in Tanzania at the University of Dar es Salaam, said she spent far more on her Brown-sponsored study abroad program than it actually cost. When Bloome tried to petition for a University of Florida program held at the same university for a fraction of the cost, her request was declined.
"They have the same program but for $5,000 instead of $40,000," Bloome said. "But the Brown policy wouldn't allow it."
Students have long had to pay full Brown tuition to study abroad through Brown-sponsored programs, but the class of 2010 will be the first to pay full tuition for alternate programs, including petitioned and Brown-approved ones like IES and IFSA Butler programs.
Brostuen said the OIP takes many factors into account when deciding whether to approve a petitioned program, but financial concern is not one of them.
"Financial considerations are secondary to the academic rationale," he said. "We want students choosing programs because academically they make sense."
An industry under scrutiny
Earlier this month, a few dozen representatives of universities and study abroad providers gathered in Toronto and then in Carlisle, Pa., for a meeting of the Forum on Education Abroad, the official standards development organization for education abroad, recognized by the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The meetings, which focused on ethics in the study abroad industry and addressed topics such as institutional transparency, incentives, conflicts of interest, program approval, fair competition and focus on students, laid the groundwork for a code of ethics that will be available to the public in January.
Though the New York State Attorney General's office did not respond to calls and e-mails from The Herald, the Times reported in August that more subpoenas would be issued to other study abroad providers.
Brostuen said the increased attention on the study abroad industry could be positive for the field, weeding out unethical players and ensuring honest practices and fair treatment of students' concerns.
"We're a professional field here, and our keen interest is students that are going on programs," Brostuen said. "It's not in anyone's interest to be steering students into programs that are not academic fits for them - that completely goes against the grain of what we stand for."
"That's why we are strongly encouraging universities and colleges to be fully on board with the forum," he added.
Brostuen said he has not received contact by any investigators from the New York State Attorney General's office.
"We've been very transparent," he said. "I don't expect any contact whatsoever."
