Two weeks ago, 1,033 Boston College students received their 2024–25 study abroad placements.
When considering the opportunity of studying abroad, a key factor for many of these students and their families is the financial burden. Students often must find their own housing in their program’s respective city, budget food costs, fund travel expenses, and more.
But above all these expenses is the glaring first cost of every abroad program: tuition.
No matter which program a student enrolls in, BC requires them to pay $33,205 in tuition, the same price they would pay for classes in Chestnut Hill. Students who receive financial aid through the University receive the same aid packages while abroad.
Some abroad locations are considered “BC in” programs, at which BC has a direct partnership with the host university. The rest of the locations are at “approved external programs,” which have no direct BC affiliation.
Similar to BC, Duke University offers students the opportunity to study abroad through either an external program or a “Duke-In” program. Like at BC, “Duke-In” programs require students to pay home-university tuition. But the cost of external programs—which are the majority of the abroad locations offered by both BC and Duke—is a different story
The DIS Stockholm is an external program available to both BC and Duke students. BC requires students who attend this program to pay a full BC tuition of $33,205. Duke only requires students who attend this program to pay the host-school’s tuition of $22,050.
For the same experience, BC students pay $11,155 more.
Like DIS Stockholm, the majority of the external programs BC students are approved to study abroad at have lower tuition rates than BC.
Larry Pickener, director of BC’s Office of Global Education (OGE), said BC’s home school tuition policy makes abroad more equitable by allowing students on financial aid to receive aid while abroad.
“By paying tuition directly to Boston College, students who are on financial aid may apply their financial aid to any program approved by the Office of Global Education,” Pickener wrote in a statement to The Heights. “Home school tuition also allows OGE to better exercise its duty of care with all students who are abroad.”
While this may seem like a noble line of reason, why is a fairly priced tuition payment mutually exclusive with students’ ability to receive financial aid during their time abroad? Duke, for instance, provides the same financial aid to students who study abroad at external programs. Regardless of whether a student is paying Duke tuition or the tuition of their host university, they can still receive financial aid.
BC also emphasizes the efforts it makes to provide vast services to students while abroad, which are factored into the tuition pricing. This ranges from resident directors to safety monitoring to ensure students remain out of danger.
Does the expense of these services justify the additional cost that a full BC tuition creates?
Perhaps. Unfortunately, there’s no way for students to know. In the case of DIS Stockholm, for example, where does the extra $11,155 go? The breakdown of where surplus funds gathered from the tuition of students studying abroad are being allocated must be issued transparently.
Of course, one could theorize that this surplus helps subsidize the attendance of international exchange students to BC. When international exchange students come to the Heights, they pay the tuition of their home university, which is often less than the tuition of BC. This prevents international students from being deterred by an increase in tuition cost.
But BC sends roughly 1,200 students abroad per year while only hosting roughly 200 international exchange students. Does BC need to charge 1,200 of its students their home-tuition to cover the cost of attendance for 200 international exchange students?
Parents—who often bear a significant portion of the study-abroad financial burden—are also left in the dark on the whereabouts of this excess tuition.
“When you think of transparency, you know, if you marched into the finance office or whoever runs the pro forma for Boston College, I think it would be very very hard for them to do a sources and uses analysis of this,” one parent of a current BC student said to The Heights.
If BC forces students studying abroad to pay full home-tuition for external programs with lower tuition rates, the onus is on the University to justify this policy. BC should publish a more in-depth breakdown or factsheet that directly addresses its abroad tuition policies. Students and families deserve to know what they’re paying for.