Study Abroad Sees Bigger Demand but Shorter Stays

Wander through the magnificent Georgian squares of Bloomsbury, the academic heart of London, and milestones of literary scholarship readily leap out.

Karl Marx wrote “Das Kapital” in the British Library, then the centerpiece of the British Museum. Charles Dickens had a house a few blocks away. Virginia Woolf held forth at a literary society here that included economist John Maynard Keynes and novelist E.M. Forster.

“The city has been around 2,000 years,” marveled Nick Solish, a history major at UC Santa Cruz, as he perched on a park bench in Bloomsbury Square. Historic sights back home, he noted, often date back a mere century and a half.

“I wanted to do a study-abroad program because I really felt like I had a limited perspective of everything going on in the world,” he said.

Classmates echoed his zeal.

“In the States, you know who the major writers are in sociology, in race studies. But they’re completely different here,” said Huriya Jabbar, a senior at UC Santa Cruz. She enjoys asking young Brits what they would think if the nation joined the euro system, for example, and “how they’re worried about the pound.”

And so Solish, Jabbar and 126 fellow California students are spending a whirlwind semester in Bloomsbury soaking up Britain’s intellectual traditions. Their program is run by the University of California and open to students from all its campuses, but classes are taught by British professors from the historic universities nearby, such as the University of London.

Students learn firsthand how Britain has been shaped by a wave of immigration from its former empire; why London’s West End was transformed into a shopping district hundreds of years ago; and who holds the purse strings in Brussels, where the central administration of the European Union is based.

Then, of course, there is Shakespeare: Students visit his hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon. There and elsewhere, they feast on a steady diet of plays, some from the standing-room-only pit of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.

“Going to the Globe, we got the whole historical background,” said Debra Simmons, a UC Berkeley film-studies major. “All of the classes are really amazing for me.... I actually wish I could be here for a year.”

Packing the whole experience into a semester or less, however, is the current trend in study-abroad programs. A decade ago, many students tended to spend their entire junior year at a foreign university. These days, they seem to prefer a limited commitment, even though they are more eager than ever to go abroad.

At UC, participation in yearlong study-abroad programs has declined about 7% since 1999, but semester-long and summer programs have nearly quadrupled their enrollment to about 3,000 last year. Because of budget cuts, however, enrollment in all UC-wide overseas programs this academic year is being held close to last year’s numbers.

“Interest in short-term programs has become so large all over the country,” says Gayle Binion, director of UC’s study-abroad center in Britain. At a time when international issues have become “much more front and center to everybody in the country,” she says, the shorter programs attract students who might lack the time or money to spend a full year abroad.

Stanford University, like UC, has seen interest in study abroad surge recently: About 38% of the student body now participates, up from 25% just two years ago. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, only two of 200 students pulled out of their planned study abroad that fall.

“If anything, I think Sept. 11 keyed people into how important it is to go overseas and experience other cultures,” said Shannon Marimon, a student-relations manager for Stanford’s overseas programs.

Stanford too is finding demand heavy for short-term programs abroad. One highly subscribed option lasts only three weeks. Just before the start of the fall quarter, students travel to India to learn about religion and healing; to St. Petersburg, Russia, to take in its magnificent architectural heritage; to Mexico to study the myths and realities of globalization. In 2002, the year the trips were introduced, more than 400 applications flooded in for 100 places.

Students cite a variety of reasons for choosing to go abroad for less than a year.

Jabbar, for example, nearly decided to attend a full-year program in Britain last year but balked at the high cost of living. She had also just chosen to major in economics and wanted to get to know the Santa Cruz professors in the field. Then there was her family, which was reluctant to have her go away at all. “It was easier to convince them of a semester abroad than an entire year,” she said.

Simmons, also a senior, felt she could not spare a full year, because she had just renewed her studies after taking substantial time off to work on Wall Street.

Science students may have it the toughest: Many cannot even escape for a semester, let alone a year.

“Our physical sciences and engineering students have a very hard time going abroad, because most of their programs are very structured,” UC’s Binion said.

Summer courses, such as those that UC offers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Sussex in England, are often their only option.

Even if their overseas program lasts only a month or semester, many students say they want to have that something extra on their resumes to impress employers and graduate schools. Mostly, though, administrators and students cite many Americans’ new focus on world affairs as the main draw to study abroad.

Simmons confessed that she was “a little concerned” about traveling abroad after the Iraq war. Still, “stepping out of my familiar environment in the U.S. and studying here has made me reflect so much on life in general in the U.S.,” she said.

For many students, an even bigger factor in favor of short programs is cost. The longer the program, the more expensive it is. “I know people who can’t go on study abroad because they now really can’t afford it,” said Solish of UC Santa Cruz.

Though the Bloomsbury program costs only airfare on top of regular UC tuition, the cost of living looms large. By one measure London is the second-most expensive city in the world, after Tokyo. The weak dollar hurts.

Jabbar figures she is spending about $3,000 extra for housing alone during her semester abroad. And the pain of living expenses hits “especially the first week, because you’re trying to stock up on groceries.”

For many UC students, spending a semester grappling with the high costs of London and its gloomy weather has an unexpected effect.

Their appreciation for the United States has risen, even as they learn about another culture.

“I’m surprised how much I actually miss Santa Cruz,” Jabbar said.