Why Requiring Study Abroad Could be Problematic by Jack

Why Requiring Study Abroad Could be Problematic by Jack - March 2016 Scholarship Essay

Study abroad programs are seen as one of the most progressive and educational experiences that one can get today. In the 2013-2014 academic school year, according to the International Institute of Education, five percent of the student population, roughly 304,000, studied abroad in various parts of the world and the number is growing with each year. The push to study abroad is great among academics with good reason. However, there are some that say we should making study abroad programs a requirement to graduate college. This leaves a glaring problem: ninety five percent of the population does not participate in these study abroad programs, why? There are several reasons as to why both traditional and non-traditional students do not participate in these programs.
Money, for college in general, is something that nearly the entire middle class grapples with. When parents have students in college, it is not unheard of for them to scale back their spending a bit so that they can afford it. How many people take a year-long vacation to a foreign country? Not very many, but why? It’s expensive. On average, a semester abroad in England is roughly $6,500, versus one semester for a resident at the University of Texas which is just under $5000. This $1,500 discrepancy between the two, in the scope of college in general, may seem small. But on the home front, the parents who are paying for this, that could be a month’s worth of meals, a mortgage payment or water for a year.
Not everyone who goes to college is a ‘traditional student’. In fact more and more people are going back to school today in their mid-thirties with a job and family. If you were to require study abroad programs, you jeopardize these positions. No company in its right mind would just give an employee six months off with the promise of a job when they get back. What about their families in general? What if the student has children? Do you just want to uproot that one student and send them halfway across the world for six months leaving a single parent with the kids? And if it is already a single parent situation, they would be forced to take the kid(s) along which would make the excursion even more expensive. If they own a house, from France how could they possibly have time for full time school and a job that would make enough to pay the mortgage on the house, plus bills, plus school, plus living, plus food, the list goes on. No one could do that.
None of this is to say that study abroad programs are bad. In fact they do a lot of good. But not everyone can take six months off of the job or afford to pay an extra $1,500 for a semester. While the price, yes, has come down to make the whole experience more affordable, which does not change the fact that it still is, and always will be more expensive. While the programs, in their current state do a lot of good, forcing people to take a study abroad semester is a wonderful idea, but does not translate into wonderful outcomes for the home.