As Dartmouth expands its off-campus programs, a number of universities have started to outsource the American education system on various campuses abroad. At one such outpost, Education City, a 2500-acre campus in Doha, Qatar, five U.S. universities offer their academic services to local residents. Weill Cornell Medical College, Virginia Commonwealth University, Texas A & M University, Georgetown University and Carnegie Mellon University all have campuses at this site.
Georgia Institute of Technology has expanded to five international campuses and plans to establish a sixth in India.
Colleges and universities have expanded their programs abroad to improve students' global awareness after the events of September 11, according to The New York Times. These institutions also work to keep their faculty and students competitive internationally.
Many academic institutions, however, are less eager to build campuses abroad.
"I still think the downside is lower than the upside," Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, told the Times.
Dartmouth does not plan to establish an additional campus in other countries according to John Tansey, executive director of off-campus programs.
A number of these concerns surround the future of the new programs' finances. Although the government of Qatar funds Education City, Americans are concerned that the bills for other off campus programs will become the responsibility of American taxpayers. Taxes related to international study, however, have been created regardless of institutions' decisions to develop campuses abroad. For example, the Senate passed a bill in June 2006 to finance one million students per year in their academic pursuits abroad for next ten years.
The costs associated with attending many international universities and colleges is less than the tuition for most American colleges. The international rates at the University of Bologna, Italy, and Peking University in Beijing are $1,740 and $3,420 per year respectively. Most colleges' off-campus programs, including those run by Dartmouth, cost the same amount as studying in the United States. The disparity between prices in study abroad programs has created controversy as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently began investigating foreign study program at Harvard University, Columbia University and Brown University, among other schools.
Dartmouth students' financial aid packages carry over to foreign study programs, language study abroad and exchange programs. This aid is not extended to students who choose to attend programs unaffiliated with the College.
Dartmouth students studying abroad must pay regular tuition as well as room and board specific to the location of their program. Tansey said that the student must pay for Dartmouth services to organize and lead the program, in addition to the cost of having a Dartmouth faculty member on the trip.
The decline of the dollar has lead to an overall increase in the budgets of the programs, Tansey said. The budgets of individual programs are combined into an annual budget for the Off-Campus Programs Office, which is then incorporated into the College's budget.
"We encourage every student at Dartmouth to participate in an off campus program," Tansey said.
The Institute of International Education ranked Dartmouth third in the nation for its 60.9 percent of students participating in off-campus programs in 200. The College estimates that between 525-575 members of the class of 2009 will have gone abroad at least once, 70-80 twice, and 5-10 three times by their graduation next June.
