New National Report Shows 7.4 Percent Growth in College Students Studying Abroad

U.S. Student Study in Cuba Increases by 63 Percent

Thirty DePaul University College of Commerce students will have a rare opportunity to study business practices in Cuba during a weeklong faculty-led study tour of the communist island nation that begins Dec. 6.

The trip is one of four sold-out overseas study seminars that the college’s Driehaus Center for International Business will sponsor for undergraduate and graduate students in December. Groups of between 20 and 30 students will participate in each of the study abroad visits to Cuba, Chile, Greece and Thailand/Hong Kong. Several students are on waiting lists for each trip.

The popularity of DePaul’s international seminars is part of a national trend of increasing student participation in college study abroad programs, despite the economic downturn and the political and travel changes that have occurred since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Nationally, 154,168 college students received credit for study abroad in 2001, a 7.4 percent increase over the year before and a 55 percent increase in the last five years, according to the annual Open Doors 2002 report released Nov. 18 by the New York-based Institute of International Education (IIE). Eighteen percent of the students studied business and management abroad, the second most common overseas study subject after social sciences, according to IIE. Students are also choosing more diverse destinations. The number of U.S. students studying abroad in Cuba grew to 905 in 2001 from 553 in 2000—a 63 percent increase.

“More and more students are coming to realize the importance of the international perspective not just in business, but in life,” said Debbie O’Donnell, director of the business seminar program. “The Driehaus Center for International Business provides opportunities for our students to experience other cultures and business practices first-hand. An added bonus to studying abroad is the strong bond that often forms between student participants. Many lasting friendships have been created on one of our study tours.”

Although DePaul has sponsored cultural tours of Cuba, this is the first time the College of Commerce has sent its students to study business there. The tour will be led by Marketing Executive-in-Residence Luis Larrea and History Professor Felix Masud-Piloto, the director of DePaul’s Center for Latino Research, who was born in Cuba and has led past DePaul cultural study tours of the island.

The business student group will visit state-owned enterprises and banks, foreign companies, small private businesses and government trade and tourism offices. They also will participate in cultural activities and discuss issues with University of Havana students and faculty. After the trip, the DePaul students will submit papers about Cuban business issues they’ve explored.

Since the 1963 U.S. embargo of Cuba, Americans have been forbidden to travel to Cuba from U.S. soil unless they obtain special licenses to visit for educational or humanitarian reasons, as DePaul has for its study abroad trips. Trade is also banned, although exemptions enacted in 2000 have allowed U.S. companies to export more than $100 million in agricultural and food products to Cuba in the last two years.

Larrea said the Cuba seminar provides students with a valuable opportunity to study an economy undergoing some change because of an aging leader, the loss of subsidies from the former Soviet Union, waning world tourism, the rise of entrepreneurial Cubans who are founding small, private businesses, and the recognition that the current Cuban economic system is a failure.

‘“Fidel (Castro) is not prepared to embrace capitalism, but he recognizes his system is not working,” Larrea said. “Cuba has started to open its economy on a limited basis and we’re likely to see a furthering of that policy in certain sectors. Average Cubans with any ambition are engaged in private businesses and that’s not going to stop. Cuba needs help—an infusion of technology, foreign investment and know-how. It’s an eye-opener for young people going into business. They can look at the remnants of a failed economy and the beginning of a transition into something different.”

The Driehaus Center has been sponsoring overseas study seminars for course credit since 1993. Past faculty-led student groups have visited China, Greece, Italy, Japan, France, Germany, Argentina, Australia, Spain, and the Czech Republic. A study tour of Vietnam, among other destinations, is planned for spring.

“These study seminars allow students to see the impact of globalization unlike anything they can read about,” said Daniel Heiser, a management professor who has led a student study abroad seminar on supply chain management and a faculty development tour in China during the last year. “When you’re standing in Shanghai seeing the neon lights that are reminiscent of Las Vegas, the foreign stores, and a booming mini-Manhattan commercial district that wasn’t there ten years ago, it shows the desire of people to change and the growing business connections among people from different countries.”