By Todd Feathers, News Staff
The price of all Dialogue of Civilizations programs will rise by at least $2,000 next summer as the university attempts to reconfigure the program, multiple Dialogue directors said, adding that the offering was unsustainable in its previous form.
The extra $2,000 fee will be tacked onto the base cost for a Dialogue, which is the same as tuition for a summer session, a university official said. Students will still pay the same tuition as last year, but a smaller percentage of the fee they pay will be used to fund the Dialogue, and a larger portion will go to the university for overhead, the Dialogue directors said.
“If you’re a numbers person like me, you knew this was coming sometime,” Peter Furth, an engineering professor who runs a Dialogue to the Netherlands, said. “It was an unbelievable deal before, but it wasn’t sustainable because it was being so heavily subsidized.”
For Dialogues during the summer of 2011, 67 percent of the tuition a student paid went toward funding the trip and the university took 33 percent to cover other unrelated expenses, Furth said. That distribution changed slightly in 2012, to 60 percent and 40 percent, he said. But under the new plan set to take effect in 2013 the university will be taking more tuition money in overheads than it uses to fund trips.
“Last year [the university] took 40 percent of the tuition off the top and gave the directors 60 percent to run the trip,” Richard Katula, a communications professor who leads a dialogue to Greece, said. “This year they’re taking 60 percent off the top and giving directors just 40 percent to run the trip.”
Students could potentially be charged even more than tuition plus the extra $2,000, Katula said. The cost of his Dialogue to Greece last year exceeded the funding he was given, so students were required to pay an additional $975 surcharge out of their pockets and Katula said he expects that to happen with future Dialogues as well.
School officials said the charges are meant to make up for the rising cost of international airfare.
“I do know that the university lost a lot of money [on the dialogue program] and one reason is that international flights are soaring in price,” Stephen Hall, director of the Office of International Studies Programs, said.
Furth, who sits on the Dialogue Faculty Advisory Group, said the $2,000 fee is not unreasonable, considering that the university has never required students to pay their own airfare. He added that students will benefit from the 60 percent of their tuition that goes directly to the university because some of that money is returned to them in the form of financial aid.
“Most universities that do study abroad and any independent programs that do study abroad you have to pay your own airfare for,” Furth said. “Now the difference [in Northeastern’s Dialogue program] is you have this $2,000 fee, but you don’t have to pay for a summer in a residence hall.”
In an interview with The News on Wednesday, President Joseph E. Aoun said he is aware of the rising cost of international study and has asked the Office of the Provost to compile a report detailing why expenses have gone up. He said he hopes that report will be completed in under a year.
Katula said he fears the higher cost will deter some students from participating, but he is even more concerned for students whose majors require them to do up to two Dialogues, such as undergraduates studying international affairs.
“You have a situation now where students are forced to do these two extra [Dialogues] with all these extra charges,” Katula said. “A number of faculty have dropped out of the [Dialogue] program for this same reason.”
The new $2,000 fee for Dialogues presents a substantial obstacle for students like middler communications major Madeline Heising, who went on a Dialogue to Italy last year that cost her an additional $300 on top of tuition.
“That’s a huge increase,” Heising said. “Half the reason I went on a Dialogue was because it was just the cost of tuition and not room and board, but the new cost would be about the same as living on campus.”
Furth said he does not think many students will be dissuaded by the higher cost.
“Even with the extra $2,000 it’s still a really good deal, you can’t turn it down,” he said. “My program is in Europe, and when it’s done students tend to continue traveling around and spending money.”
