Death highlights risks of study abroad programs

The death Saturday of a University of Virginia senior while studying abroad is a stark reminder that overseas travel comes with risks.

For relatives of students harmed while studying overseas, the latest incident is another reminder that the pain never goes away. "It brings back all these old memories," says Anne Schewe, of Amherst, Mass. Her daughter, Sara, was one of four college students killed in 1996 in a bus crash in India while studying abroad. "Our hearts go out to the families and what they must be feeling right now."

The vast majority of students who study abroad each year -- nearly 274,000 students in the 2010-11 academic year -- return unharmed. Casey Schulman, the UVA student who died when a small boat hit her while she was snorkeling with classmates in the Caribbean, was one of the unfortunate exceptions.

Like any foreign travel, studying abroad poses dangers. Since the 1996 bus crash, international education providers have stepped up efforts to reduce risks to the growing number of students spending semesters in other countries.

"Safety and security of the students is obviously the top priority for all programs," says Brian Whalen, president of The Forum on Education Abroad, a non-profit group for study abroad providers. When deaths do occur, "that's tragic, unfortunate," he says.

Exact numbers are hard to come by because no one keeps track nationally. Whalen's group hopes to build a database of critical incidents to help providers pinpoint how they occur and how they can be prevented. Preliminary findings of a Forum pilot project collecting data on 391 programs in 60 countries in fall 2009 and January 2010 show that, of 311 incidents reported as needing critical attention, 105 involved illness, the most common problem, and 55 involved theft. No deaths occurred during the pilot study, Whalen says.

Schulman and her classmates were in their final days of Semester at Sea, a program through which students live on a ship and sail from country to country. As it happens, the students who died in the 1996 bus crash also were participating in Semester at Sea, which is administered by the Institute for Shipboard Education and now sponsored by the University of Virginia.

A statement Saturday from Semester at Sea President Les McCabe said the snorkeling trip had been organized by a group of students and was not a Semester at Sea event.

Sheryl Hill, whose son, Tyler, died during a high school trip to Japan in 2007, says the study abroad industry should be required to report all incidents publicly. Last year, she founded the Minnesota-based ClearCause Foundation, which advocates federal oversight of study abroad programs. It also is developing an emergency preparedness plan to help parents when a child studying abroad is hurt or killed.

"Students and families have every right to know the safety record of the program they're entrusting their future and their life to," Hill says.

USA Today