As Tom Mayer prepared for his first year of college this summer, he had a few more items on his to-do list than the usual incoming freshman: Find his passport, get a money belt, and pack a suitcase for a two-week class in Africa.
Mr. Mayer is one of almost 100 new Michigan State University students who studied abroad in July and August, going overseas before they even stepped foot in a classroom on the East Lansing campus. The 18-year-old went to South Africa to study environmental issues, while other participants traveled to Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand for short courses they took for credit.
Michigan State is not alone in encouraging students to go abroad early in their college life. Dozens of other universities have started similar efforts in the last decade, offering overseas opportunities that last a week to a full academic year, in countries as diverse as Britain, China, and Mexico.
“You’re seeing a desire to get students engaged in studying abroad very, very early,” says Skip Langley, a study-abroad adviser at the University of Mississippi, which started sending freshmen to Europe in 2008. “It’s one of these things that a lot of people are starting to experiment with.”
Growth of Interest
A variety of factors are driving the growth. Universities say the programs help globalize the curriculum and student body, accommodate enrollment of more freshmen without straining home-campus facilities, and recruit top students. While students who are already highly motivated are most likely to apply, administrators say international experience generally increases the confidence of any student, both academically and socially, and that alumni of the trips often become student leaders on campus.
But sending first-year students to foreign countries has its challenges. For most of them, it’s the first time away from their parents. Add the combination of foreign cultures, homesickness, and being of legal drinking age in some other countries, and the potential for behavioral problems is high. Another major concern, say administrators, is making sure freshmen still feel a part of the wider university community while overseas and have a smooth reentry back on the home campus.
“It’s not easy,” says Wendy Viggiano, who until recently oversaw Syracuse University’s freshmen program in Florence, Italy. “Their first experience of college life is boarding an airplane and flying outside the country. It’s very different than what a traditional first-year student would experience.”
To be sure, opportunities for first-year students to go abroad are not new. In 1994 Arcadia University, in Glenside, Pa., began offering a trip to London over spring break specifically for freshmen. Since then the program has expanded to 15 countries. The options include a trip to Shanghai to study China’s rise as an economic power and one to Havana focused on relations between Cuba and the United States.
Last spring, 308 first-year students—60 percent of the freshmen class—went overseas, says Janice Finn, Arcadia’s associate dean for international affairs.
The university also started offering a semester-abroad opportunity for freshmen in 2003. At the time, the university faced an overenrollment problem and decided to use its London facility as a release valve, offering students a $1,500 tuition discount and free airfare as an incentive to go abroad, said William Meiers, an Arcadia administrator who started the program. While it was meant as a temporary solution to a problem, the effort was considered a success and the university decided to keep the overseas program as an option.
The program is now offered in both the fall and the spring, and a second site, in Stirling, Scotland, was added. About 100 students are expected to take part during the 2012-13 academic year, said Mr. Meiers.
Unlike Arcadia, Michigan State offers only a short-term program, which it started nine years ago. Jim Lucas, who manages the program for the university, says a semester abroad would be unpopular with freshmen given that they are often drawn to the university in part for its campus life, like its Big 10 football games.
Different Goals
Also, Michigan State’s program abroad has a different goal than most other such programs for freshmen, which tend to focus on exposing students to new cultures and countries. While that’s part of the university’s objectives, its primary focus is to give incoming freshmen a preview of college-level coursework. The trips include a mix of class time and visits to places relevant to the courses. For example, the students who studied environmental issues in South Africa went to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, in Cape Town, to see firsthand the country’s rich variety of plant life. “When you get them right out of high school, they’re fresh freshmen,” says Mr. Lucas. “You have a lot of ability to shape them and help in their development in college.”
Mr. Mayer, the student who went to South Africa recently, said he thinks the class time abroad has helped him. “Just about every student that enters college is a little worried about their classes. You’re worried about how rigorous they’re going to be compared to high-school classes,” he says. “Being able to do this, I’ve got a little better sense of what college classes may look like.”
Other students who have gone overseas echo the idea that spending time abroad built their confidence.
“I definitely feel comfortable managing new places,” says Becca Austin, an Arcadia graduate who spent her first semester in London. She says the experience spurred her to go abroad again during her senior year, to Italy, and has helped in her career as a theater technician and costume designer, which requires her to travel across the United States to various productions.
While Michigan State and Arcadia have well-established programs, other universities are just getting started. Mr. Langley, at the University of Mississippi, says 16 students so far have taken advantage of its program, which send students to Scotland or Greece. “It’s actually been slow getting off.”
The length of the program—a full academic year—and the cost of living in Europe have deterred some people, he says. But he also notes that the program is meant to be fairly exclusive, a way to entice top-tier high-school graduates to enroll at the university. “It’s that student earning an academic-excellence scholarship rather than your Bluto from Animal House that wants to come and do all the fraternity parties and football games.”
Seeking Top Students
Like at the University of Mississippi, most programs seek high-caliber students who can clearly articulate why going overseas is important to their college life.
“We definitely wanted to make it a selective process so that only students who are quite serious about international education and see it as the focal point of what they want to do as undergraduates would go to the trouble of applying,” says Karl Schonberg, associate dean for international and intercultural studies at St. Lawrence University, which is sending freshmen to London for a semester for the first time this fall. The entire freshmen class was allowed to apply; 27 did, and 12 were accepted.
At a few universities, study abroad isn’t a matter of choice for some students. New York University makes admission to some applicants contingent on their studying at one of its facilities in Europe or China. The move allows the university to enroll more students without putting an additional burden on housing or other student services at its New York City campus. Northeastern University requires undergraduates accepted for the spring semester to spend the fall doing service-learning projects in one of five countries—Australia, Britain, Costa Rica, Greece, or Ireland—where they earn credit toward a Northeastern degree. Both universities say they make an effort to match the overseas opportunities with students’ academic interests.
“The sites the students choose have to be compatible with their majors and their ages,” says Renata Nyul, a spokeswoman for Northeastern. “The curriculum at each location is tailored to meet the needs of the specific college at Northeastern.”
Some study-abroad officials say nudging students into going abroad could backfire.
Ms. Viggiano, who previously worked at Syracuse as a recruitment specialist and is now at IES Abroad, a study-abroad provider, says she worries that such programs could include participants who don’t appreciate the overseas educational opportunity. “It could trigger a lot of different behavioral issues because they didn’t want to be there in the first place,” she says.
Discipline and Maturity
In general, study-abroad administrators who have worked with freshmen dismiss concerns that they are too immature for foreign travel and say they rarely have had disciplinary problems or other issues with first-year students.
“So far, two and only two students have come home in nine years,” Mr. Meiers says about Arcadia’s semester-long program. He says orientation sessions help prevent adjustment problems. Arcadia holds an orientation session before students depart and another upon their arrival in Britain, which includes a session with a British police officer who explains the country’s laws.
But just as important as helping students adjust to their temporary new homes is making sure they feel connected to the main campus during long stints abroad and get assistance when they return.
Syracuse, for example, has juniors and seniors who are studying abroad at its Italian center coach freshmen on life at the university, with practical lessons like how to navigate the registrar’s office and campus housing. When the first-year students return, the university requires them to attend re-entry sessions on time management, dealing with stress, and how to get involved in on-campus activities like the student newspaper. It added the sessions when it found that returning students committed to too many classes and extracurricular activities.
“We see that some students want to overextend themselves because they are kind of nervous” that they missed a semester on campus, says Ms. Viggiano.
Another issue for freshmen is how much the academic content they get overseas resembles what they would receive back home. In some programs, the participants are essentially first-year students at foreign universities. Other programs try to mirror at least some of the courses back home.
For example, St. Lawrence University requires its first-year students to enroll in seminars designed to teach critical thinking and communications skills that are the building blocks of college academics. Mr. Schonberg says the university will send a faculty member to teach the courses to its freshmen in London. While paying for an instructor to live and travel overseas adds to the cost, “we really would not want to offer an off-campus program for first-year students that didn’t take seriously that curriculum.”
Princeton Experiment
But as universities experiment with study-abroad options for new students, occasionally class time plays no role at all.
Three years ago, Princeton University started giving a limited number of incoming students an opportunity to spend nine months overseas working on health, education, or community-development projects. The students earn no academic credit during that time and become members of the following year’s freshmen class. The trips, to China, India, Peru, or Senegal, cost roughly $30,000 for each student, with Princeton covering the cost.
Twenty-eight students were selected for the “structured gap year” for 2012-13, and the university’s goal is to have 100 students participate annually, says John A. Luria, director of the program. He says the new program gives students a greater appreciation of global issues and promotes a sense of service. When they return to campus, they influence their peers in and outside the classroom, he says.
“Having 400 students who have taken a year off before college and have done this kind of service,” Mr. Luria says, “that potentially has an important impact on the Princeton undergraduate experience.”
That’s a common sentiment among study-abroad administrators. While such efforts certainly educate students and help manage enrollment, perhaps the biggest beneficiary is the university that sends them.
At Arcadia, students who spend a semester abroad often become members of the honors society, encourage others to go abroad, and maintain strong ties to the university after they graduate, says Mr. Meiers.
“The students,” he says, “enrich the university in an inordinate way.”
