There are those who figure that spending their vacations with an ivy-covered professor, discussing the esoteric values of pre-Raphaelite art and its meaning for the 21st Century, is about as exciting as trying to paper-train a Santa Cruz banana slug.
On the other hand, there are those who have traveled around a fair amount and are looking for a lot more than just hitting a new hotel every other day. They have gone beyond the awe of a first-time trip and would appreciate understanding-in a lot more depth-the things they`re seeing.
To find out how boring, or enlightening, a university-sponsored study vacation might be, I headed for South America to give it a try.
Boring? Not on your life. Dull? No way. A good trip? Well, just about the best vacation I`ve ever taken, and that`s saying something.
Part of it was our group, which was very compatible. Part of it was the location; how can you go wrong with the Galapagos and Machu Picchu? And part of it was the opportunity to have a university professor put everything in context.
The bottom line: Try a study trip; you`ll love it.
Awe-inspiring choices
Travel study programs are expanding, and universities are offering increasingly sophisticated programs and services for non-academic travelers. So you should not be surprised to get a brochure in the mail one of these days announcing that your local state college or university is offering a trip to Nepal with a local professor.
If you decide to take the bait, you might end up having one of the best vacations of your life. The list of places available and topics to be studied is awe-inspiring-and generally, you`ll find the prices right and the quality good.
The company that set up my trip, Travelearn, uses the best foreign travel companies available. The hotels are all top-rate, the logistical services are excellent and the tour leaders (from my experience) are great.
Travelearn is a Pennsylvania company specializing in setting up university-sponsored study trips. My trip, 15 days long, was $2,895 from Los Angeles, including air fare and most meals. Travelearn programs run from the low $2,000s to the upper $3,000s.
Professor Larry Foster, dean of the graduate school at San Francisco State University and the man who led our trip south, is an old hand at travel study programs, having led trips overseas for 25 years. He works with Travelearn and other wholesalers as part of the university`s extension department. He`s quite impressed with the quality of the non-academic travelers he has been getting.
”We`ve never had that many regular students,” he said. ”Most of them early on were college and high school teachers working on their credentials and a friend or relative now and then.
”But in the middle 1970s, school districts were cutting back on the number of teachers, so we started getting more adult, non-educational travelers. And I have to say that in general, all the groups I`ve had have been great.”
Why teachers do it
Educators with an ounce of sense have always been travelers. How better to teach Spanish than by going to Spain? How better to understand the works of Goethe than by going to Germany?
But why, these pedagogues reasoned, should they have to pay for it all themselves? So the overseas study program was born. This allowed university students, other faculty members and elementary and secondary teachers to go as a group, thus saving money and earning credit at the same time. And-here was the big hook-the trips allowed the tour leaders, usually faculty experts on the country or subject to be studied, to go along free.
Everybody benefited: students, teachers, tour agencies, foreign travel suppliers and the lucky person who got to teach his way across Europe for nothing.
This remarkably capitalistic approach to fun was too good to remain hidden in the ivory-encrusted recesses of academia, of course, and pretty soon, a civilian or two managed to sneak onto one of the university tours.
Word spread, which was a good thing because all of a sudden enrollments started dropping and fewer teachers were being hired and that meant fewer students were around to go on tours which meant that universities couldn`t afford to organize tours.
One solution was to go public, starting back in the early 1970s, a successful move that ran right into a demographic fact of life: Even non-educators wanted to learn, and many had the time and the money to try.
Ed Williams, who runs Travelearn, is professor of education at Kean College in New Jersey. He thinks the increase in the number of ”civilians”
going on study trips is caused by changing perceptions.
”In the early 1970s, you started seeing the emergence of the belief that education is a lifelong learning experience, and we had a lot of people, not just teachers, coming back to school, coming back to retool. We saw this market and started summer programs for adult learners, primarily teachers, and people started hearing about it. Next thing we knew, it was growing like mad.”
Indeed it was. Some sources estimate that the number of university-sponsore d travel trips has doubled since 1980. With the increase in programs came an increase in interest by non-educators.
”What happened,” Williams said, ”is that these study trips matched the demographics. We discovered right off that there are an ever-increasing number of people who want more than an airline ticket and a hotel room.”
Faith in academia
But why a university trip? Williams says it`s the confidence factor.
”When people sign up with a study trip from San Francisco State or San Jose State, what they`re doing is buying the credibility of the institution. Maybe they`ve heard bad stories about travel agents or other group tours and they feel that a university just wouldn`t let them down.”
In most cases, a university`s travel study programs are part of its extended education department. Sometimes, the university will organize a trip on its own, using its own faculty and developing its own sources and contacts overseas. Williams says, however, that not all universities are capable of creating and managing their own programs.
Almost all the university study trips open to outsiders are offered for credit. But few take the classroom along to the point where it gets in the way of the trip. Normally, there are daily meetings or classes, where tour participants learn about the areas they are seeing or will see in a few days. Only rarely is attendance mandatory.
But the whole idea behind the study tours means that most of the people on a trip will eat up the classroom experience and make the most of the faculty member or expert who is leading the tour.
And these study trips are not confined to universities. Zoos are taking them, museums are taking them and such national concerns as the Smithsonian Institution are taking them.
The faculty members who are picked to lead the tours are also part of the network. Usually, a university wants to have one of its own lead its trips, but Williams says he tries to rotate faculty members so everybody gets a shot. So go travel. You might learn something.
For more information about study programs, contact your local college or university, or contact Travelearn, P.O. Box 315, Lakeville, Pa. 18438;
717-226-9114. –
