"It gives you a clue about what you want to get out of your education," he says. "What I brought back was really more of a personal thing--it was my perspective."

Administrative Problems

Although Harvard encourages its students to take time off to go abroad during their undergraduate careers, students say that substantial administrative roadblocks have to be overcome.

Harvard is presently expanding its international intership program, which it enthusiastically promotes to its undergraduates. But the University does not recommend study abroad and is notoriously stingy in awarding academic credit for foreign course work.

"Everything needs to be pre-approved and it's still not guaranteed that you'll get credit," says Shebar.

The question of credit is often cited as one of the reasons more students do not explore another culture during their college years.

"Harvard is not supportive of people who take time off insofar as you don't get credit," says Barrow. "It is a certain insularity on the part of Harvard. It's almost as if they are saying `how could you want to?'"

But University officials say that the best way to experience a foreign culture is to work in it, not to study in a protective environment.

"We have reservations about many study abroad programs because what they are doing is bringing together a large number of Americans," says Nancy S. Pyle, assistant to President Derek C. Bok for internationalization.

"We would like you to go out on your own rather than have someone hold your hand," she adds.

The experience of some students who have participated in official study-abroad programs supports Pyle's contention.

George Polsky '92, who spent last fall term in Florence, Italy and the spring in Salamanca, Spain, says that most of the people he encountered in the program were Americans. "The day I got back I felt like I had never left, the reason being that there were a lot of Americans there," he says.

When he wanted to practice the native language, Polsky "would just go to bars and speak with old drunk men," he says.

But other students say that the handling of foreign coursework varies from department to department. Some concentrations take special measures to ensure that returning students have tutors while others leave it to the student to find one.

"In my case there was no problem," says D. Cressler Heasley '90-91 who worked for an architecture firm in New York and then trained to become a leader of outdoor programs in New Hampshire.