Op-Ed
Misguided Travelers From A Subpoenaed University
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Agree to Disagree
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As part of an ongoing investigation of study abroad programs, the New York State Attorney General issued a subpoena to Cornell and 14 other colleges last month to scrutinize their relationships with independent study abroad agencies. Whether or not the inquiry elicits any wrongdoing, the subpoena does underscore a serious issue within our study abroad office, namely the preference of certain programs and even countries over other comparable alternatives.
Abroad programs generate a boatload of cash (or as my friends and I say after visiting Denmark, a hefty sum of Kroner), which, as always, should raise eyebrows. My Cornell tuition was highest during my semester abroad in London, and included a supplemental $5,000 fee for an ill-defined “Cornell International Program Tuition” (where was the other $15,000 going?).
Now, with the revelation that university offices may have been colluding with study abroad providers in “rarely disclosed and largely unknown” practices that could “limit study-abroad options and drive up their price,” according to The New York Times, it is imperative that Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo not back down from his investigation.
Truth be told, there is little chance that the subpoena will reveal any corruption at our University. Nonetheless, it should open Cornell’s ears to the grumblings of many students that the study abroad office has shown undue favoritism in promoting some programs over others.
When Margaret Kurtzman ’08 approached the Study Abroad office last fall, she already knew that she wanted to spend the following semester in Scotland. During her meetings with the office, she found that it was supportive of her decision, but that it was actively stressing the University of Edinburgh over another program at the University of St. Andrews.
“The main difference,” Kurtzman said, “was that at Cornell they made it seem like the University of Edinburgh was a more prestigious school,” when in fact, she found the difference to be “so slight” once she arrived in Scotland.
Two students who traveled to nearby Ireland had similar complaints with the Abroad office.
Josh Gerber ’08 — a housemate of mine — initially wanted to go to Prague, but after the Abroad office told him it was akin to “one big party,” and that law schools would frown on his studying there, he set his sights on Dublin, “home to James Joyce, my favorite author,” as Gerber said.
Abroad steered him to Trinity College, and promised that student housing would be made available. Yet when he arrived in Dublin on New Years Day, he found that Trinity did not in fact offer housing, and that he was on his own.
“I lived out of a suitcase for a week, and went apartment hunting all over the city,” Gerber said, remembering one rental above a substance recovery center located in a neighborhood known to locals as “Stab City.”
For Anna Dubenko ’08, Trinity College (even sans accommodations) would have been preferable to the program she ended up on, at University College Dublin. There, unbeknownst to her beforehand, she had to enroll in six classes as part of UCD’s rigorous curriculum.
Gerber and Dubenko both said they felt slighted by the University for not offering a Butler University program as an option, where “students from various universities back in the States” studied at Trinity, but were also treated to “amazing housing and organized activities for its students to help them make friends and get acclimated to the foreign city,” said Gerber.
The same fate awaited Liana Kraushaar ’08 in Bologna, where study abroad sent her to further her studies in Italian. Kraushaar was told that her first choice program’s deadline had passed (though she later applied, and got in), and that she should instead apply to a program run by Indiana University — so she did.
But when she landed in Bologna, Kraushaar found that her program provided no student housing, and instead walked its 15 students through the streets, encouraging them to rip flyers with apartment advertisements off the city walls. Here’s the kicker: there was a very similar program nearby, with the “same type of requirements, except that accommodations were provided, and the program was better run,” said Kraushaar.
At the end of the day, none of these stories prove any wrongdoing on the part of the University; yet where Cuomo sees fire, there does appear to be smoke. Even if the subpoena fails to reveal any misconduct at Cornell, there’s good reason to take a second look at where all this tuition’s going, and perhaps more importantly, whether anyone is benefiting more from it than the students themselves.
Cornellians study abroad - Then and Now
In earlier times I can report that Cornell was very liberal in its policies about accepting undergraduate credits from foreign universities with which it had no financial affiliation. In doing so, Cornell was willing to forego tuition revenue in exchange for broadened academic opportunities for its undergraduates.
As an undergrad (Class of '66) I spend one year at the University of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) at Peradeniya and one year at the Delhi School of Economics in India's capital.
Both institutions charged foreigners a couple of hundred dollars per year in tuition - none of which was passed back to the bursar (then in the basement of Day Hall).
My academic credits from Ceylon and India were reviewed by some sort of academic committee in Ithaca for their merits and then added to my transcript at no charge.
I trust that the New York Attorney General will find that a similar liberality is still in place for footloose Cornellians who want to study for a year in Kabul or Sanaa, or Tegucigalpa.