Conventional wisdom says you get what you pay for, but, for Georgetown’s study abroad programs, that just isn’t true. In the next three weeks, many members of the junior class will cement their plans to study abroad next semester. Students will visit a diverse array of cities from Buenos Aires to Beijing and everywhere in between, but the one thing that all study abroad sites will have in common is that their regular tuition is far less than Georgetown’s. Although study abroad students won’t be on campus, they will be unfairly forced to pay full Georgetown tuition.
The policy requiring students who study abroad to pay full tuition—$17,784 plus an additional $140 for insurance—was only instituted two years ago. Previously, students would pay the cost of matriculation and housing at their chosen university, in addition to a $3000 credit transfer fee. Many countries where students study have heavily subsidized university costs that are dramatically lower than the cost of an American private university, but Georgetown is now forcing students to pay thousands of dollars for campus services that they are unable to take advantage of while they are abroad.
Katherine Bellows, OIP’s executive director of international programs, justified the policy by noting that on-campus students pay equal tuition regardless of their majors, even though the equipment for a Chemistry class costs more than the materials for a humanities course. What Bellows fails to take into account is that students who elect to take courses that require expensive materials pay a lab fee on top of their regular tuition every semester, so the analogy doesn’t hold.
Moreover, even though the materials for one class may cost more than those for another, all students have equal access to the same resources here at Georgetown. But when students are abroad, every program offers a different level of support, and students should not be forced to pay Georgetown’s prices when they do not have access to Georgetown-level services.
While some programs—mostly ones that are run by companies like CIEE, the Counsel on International Education Exchange—provide excellent services including planned trips and textbooks, many direct enrollment programs leave students to fend for themselves. Students who participate in an outside program should pay the company’s price, and students who directly enroll should only be required to pay for the cost of their courses, housing, and credit transfer.
Students who are not on campus during a given semester should not be forced to subsidize campus life. Georgetown should reinstate the older, fairer system of having students pay for their actual semester, not someone else’s.
