Higher Ed | Daily Report

As with many offerings at the University of California these days, students will begin picking up a bigger share of the tab for study-abroad programs, while state funding is going to cover less.

The Aggie UC Davis' student newspaper, reports that students in the UC Education Abroad Program will see a couple of fee increases.

The first is a fee hike of $1,000 to $1,500, on average, for specific programs. The second is an as-yet-unnamed general fee for all study-abroad students to contribute to systemwide operating revenue for the program.

The additional charges come in addition to a fee increase that will affect all UC undergraduates.

The shift is part of a plan that has been in the works since August 2008, when UC President Mark Yudof told Michael Cowan, the Education Abroad Program's executive director, to develop a new strategic plan – one that relied more heavily on student fees and less on state general funds.

According to the Education Abroad Program's five-year budget plan, state appropriations for the program will drop from $4.1 million this year to $1.3 million in the 2013-14 academic year, while student fee revenue will rise from $24.5 million to $27.8 million in the same period.

Right now, the Education Abroad Program appears to cost about as much as it does to study at a home campus. The total cost of the Argentina program, for example, runs about $12,300 for the spring semester, which is about equal to the estimated total cost of a semester living on a UC campus during the 2009-10 school year. (Total costs for a year, by the way, are $24,885.)

In the future, students who dream of taking Advanced Spanish Composition and Conversation at the Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires, will have to cover the same 32 percent fee increase that their California-based counterparts will pay. Additionally, study-abroad students will also pay a supplemental fee, plus the $1,000 to $1,500 program fee. That likely means fewer Argentine pesos for that extracurricular Tango class.