Study abroad is a huge part of the MU experience. It’s an opportunity like none other — a chance to greatly expand your world by spending several months in some of the most exciting places on Earth. It can also be terrifying, strange and confusing, making the student feel alien and alone. So for it to be a success, the program and administration responsible for the study abroad experience must be attentive, accountable and responsive.
However, we have found the erratic management and bureaucratic density of MU’s study abroad administration can often let students down, and the ambiguous, unfair fee hikes and changes in MU’s programs regularly blindside students, making what should be an enlightening, thrilling experience into at best a headache and at worst a nightmare.
As explained in this issue’s special report, study abroad programs at MU are run by two offices that often don’t seem to communicate effectively with each other. There is, at times, a vast disconnect between the International Center and the academic colleges’ study abroad offices, which can be further complicated by both a disconnect between the school and externally-run programs and by a disconnect between the school and the student.
Many study abroad “veterans” our reporter talked to spoke of frustrating attempts to get in contact with MU study abroad staff and troubles clarifying and understanding what they needed to complete and pay for before leaving. The director of study abroad in the School of Journalism told The Maneater a journalism exchange program is not meant for students who need a lot of “hand-holding.” Does this mean students who want to know what they’re getting themselves into, who want to be kept aware of the preparation process?
Communication must be improved, both between MU’s study abroad programs and its participating students and between programs and the International Center. Perhaps this could be done by reducing spending on marketing and hiring more student relations staff; after all, there is scarce better marketing than a good reputation, and that is only built by students having positive, helpful experiences with MU’s study abroad programs. There is no reason for programs to feel bureaucratic and impermeable at this university.
The other aspect of study abroad at MU we feel the need to address is the sporadic nature of fees and costs. James Scott, the current director of the International Center, approves all academic courses and programs that are proposed through a process involving the university curators. But he is given no oversight over the fees that each college’s study abroad office charges. This decentralized structure gives rise to websites listing a vague category of “program fees” and sometimes the warning of “additional costs” with the unassuming phrase “prices vary.” What hides behind those phrases can often be thousands of dollars more in costs than expected for the student.
At MU, every single dollar of your student fees are accounted for — you _know_ how much you are paying for MizzouRec, how much for DSA and so on — as making this fee breakdown common knowledge has been a major focus of MSA student leaders. With study abroad programs here, there is little of this public accountability, and often a lot of misunderstandings or unknowns. For example, exchange programs in the School of Journalism all have a flat program fee of $1,250. Program officials were unable to provide The Maneater with the breakdown of where these fees go; it seemed to our reporter that they simply did not know what the money is spent on.
It’s important to note here that we are not accusing any MU study abroad program of stealing students’ money or diverting it for its own gain. The University of Missouri is a non-profit organization; whatever is left of the $1,250 from journalism exchange students’ fee is put into a scholarship fund for future study-abroad participants, for example. But there must be more accountability and transparency in these programs, and this must be relayed to students. Each program should present an itemized list of where fees are going and anticipated charges that might arise. If you are paying tens of thousands of dollars to go abroad, you deserve to know where every single dollar is going. To offer students anything less is an embarrassment.
A big goal of MU’s study abroad programs has been working to ensure every student has the opportunity to study abroad, regardless of his/her and his/her family’s ability to pay. That becomes difficult to accomplish when fees and charges are ambiguous and inconsistent; an unexpected $489 for a visa might be doable for some students, but for others it might mean financial ruin or even require a loan (or second loan) be taken out. That’s unacceptable.
We don’t think study abroad offices and the International Center are interested in scamming students; to the contrary, they help students achieve amazing things and discover their world. But to many of the study abroad veterans The Maneater has talked to, study abroad at MU sometimes felt like a scam. The university owes it to its students to be completely transparent, open and helpful with study abroad. Such experiences can be challenging enough as it is; students who study abroad don’t need an obtuse bureaucracy at home to deal with, too.
