Information on study abroad is getting lost in translation before students set foot in a foreign country.
Students planning on studying abroad have to coordinate with their academic department or college, the UCLA study abroad office, the University of California Education Abroad Program and the international school they are studying at before they leave on their trips. Once they return, UCLA admissions has to approve the units the student earned while abroad for credit toward a student’s major or graduation requirements.
This convoluted and confusing system of coordinating between various offices causes miscommunication and misconceptions by the various offices and the students. This leads to unnecessary difficulty for students in planning which courses to take before leaving and getting credit for them upon returning.
Students are told different information by different offices, and there seems to be no communication between those offices on who is responsible for what. The solution to these miscommunications would be to create a consistent protocol for each office involved and a universal account that each office can access to see what forms and information the student has submitted at each step and what other related offices have approved.
Students cannot get official pre-approval for major or general education credit for their study abroad courses, even if they are studying at an established UCEAP program that hundreds of other UC students have used in the past and earned credit for, said Angie Platt, international programs counselor at UCLA. Students can only get unofficial pre-approval from their departments before leaving. Admissions or the registrar have the final say on whether or not the credit for courses taken outside of UCLA will actually transfer for major or graduation credit for non-UCEAP and UCEAP programs respectively.
That means that students have no way of knowing whether their courses will count toward their degree – knowledge that could affect whether the student chooses to study abroad in the first place. Additionally, if the units end up not counting when the student gets back, it could set them back for graduation by an entire quarter.
The problem starts with the understaffed UCLA study abroad office. There are only three study abroad counselors whose job it is to help students studying through UCEAP programs, and 712 students who studied abroad through UCEAP the academic year of 2013-2014. That’s about 237 students per counselor.
Multiple students often complain about the difficulty of getting an appointment with a study abroad counselor, and Platt said the office is extremely busy in December and January, the months leading up to many application deadlines.
This can create frustrating and time-consuming experiences for students.
For example, Daniel Smith, a UCLA alumnus who graduated at the end of fall of 2014, studied abroad in Argentina through a UCEAP program. His academic counselor approved the courses he was planning on taking as sufficient for fulfilling his language requirement.
While abroad, Smith received an email from his degree auditor that said he needed to get his abroad courses approved by the Spanish and Portuguese department at UCLA to earn credit toward his foreign language requirement. This was not what his counselor previously told him.
Upon returning to UCLA, Smith was again told, this time by the registrar, that he needed to get the approval of the Spanish and Portuguese department and again he had to ask his counselor to explain.
Fortunately, Smith’s grades were added to his transcript in time for his set graduation date and his language requirement was met, although he never got the approval from the Spanish and Portuguese department.
Smith’s experience shows the lack of clear communication between offices within the same building at UCLA. Understanding of protocol on approval seems to differ office to office, with no communication between them.
Smith’s story is not uncommon. Marissa Meyer, a third-year study of religion student, studied abroad in the summer of 2014 in Scotland at the University of Glasgow. Summer 2014 was the first time this program was offered and it was designed for UC students.
She said the communication and planning between the students and the study abroad office was almost nonexistent. She didn’t even have housing accommodations four days before the program started, there were miscommunications on what series of UCLA physics the classes were equivalent to and the students weren’t given information on what to bring as far as supplies for the classes, Meyer said.
Smith and Meyer’s experiences show the lack of communication that makes coordinating approval for classes so difficult. This could be fixed by a universal access system and consistent structure for all offices.
Lack of communication between UCLA offices in the same building should not be the most difficult part of studying abroad.