Behind the scenes of study abroad…

I was interested to note that Berkeley was mentioned in a New York Times article today (Aug. 13), “In Study Abroad, Gifts and Money for Universities” as an institution that receives financial incentives from one of the many study abroad contracting organizations, the American Institute for Foreign Study. While the article points out that cultural exchange organizations like AIFS contracting with universities is standard practice and offers many practical benefits that get passed along to student participants (like expanding the number of countries that students from a given university can have access to through study abroad), it also describes several ways in which these relationships can limit students’ choices, deny them college credit, and/or levy unfairly high fees on them.

What are the politics of study abroad at Berkeley? Where are students allowed to study for credit, how are relationships negotiated with host institutions, and how true is the assertion made in the first line of the article that “overseas study has become a prized credential of the undergraduate experience”?