Faced with a growing budget deficit, the Office of International Programs is discussing increasing fees for students who study abroad through programs not run by the University.
If the proposed plan is approved by the Brown Corporation, members of the Class of 2010 and after who choose to study abroad on a non-Brown program would continue to pay University tuition for instruction at their chosen institution and remain Brown students. Currently, students who attend programs administered by other universities take a leave of absence from Brown. The students must pay a fee of $1,735 per semester in addition to the alternative program's tuition, which can differ widely from Brown's.
"The revenue to support (study abroad) program costs has not been sufficient," said Dean of the College Paul Armstrong. He added that the current financial model is "no longer workable," due to rising tuitions at foreign universities and the declining value of the dollar.
The current requirement that students attending an alternative program take a leave of absence from the University creates a host of problems, especially with housing, Armstrong said. About a third of the junior class goes abroad, and of these, about half choose to attend alternative programs. The University policy of making students withdraw has been a "bureaucratic fiction," Armstrong said.
Students on all University-run study abroad programs pay the same tuition, despite the fact that some, such as Brown's partnerships with Keio University and the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies in Japan, cost the OIP more than it receives in tuition, while others cost the OIP less. Brown also charges the same tuition to students regardless of their concentration, even though some departments are more costly to run than others, Armstrong said. Extending the Brown tuition to all alternative abroad programs for which students receive credit is in keeping with this philosophy.
Both the University of Pennsyl-vania and Columbia University have similar home-school tuition policies in place.
"It's had nothing but a positive impact," said Geoffrey Gee, director of study abroad and international programs at Penn. The school instituted the policy in 1994. Penn students pay Penn tuition and have the opportunity to choose from a variety of approved alternative programs, but unlike Brown, there are no opportunities to petition an alternative program if none of the existing programs meet a student's needs.
Opinions vary on whether the University should adopt the model.
"I actually saved a lot of money," said Andrew Hoem '06, who studied abroad with 15 other Brown students at the University of New South Wales, an approved alternative program in Australia. Hoem paid significantly less than Brown's tuition and said that the current policy "is fine how it is."
But Armstrong said the new policy will add an element of fairness to the study abroad program. "Students should choose what they study based on their interests - and also where they study abroad - and not based on tuition differentials. What the home-school tuition model will do is to introduce equity that doesn't now exist," he said.
An alternative to the proposed plan would be to raise the alternative program fee, which has reached $4,500 at Cornell. "Almost tripling the fee doesn't seem to me to be a really good idea," Arm-strong said.
As the University tries to reform the study abroad program to keep it financially sound, administrators are concerned about what academic effects the changes will have on students.
"When you change the model of financing study abroad you want to be sure that you don't affect educational decisions adversely," Armstrong said.
