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Contact: Henry van Wagenberg (henry@rateyourstudyabroad.com)
Henry van Wagenberg and John Henry -- the two founders of RateYourStudyAbroad.com, a new website enabling students to write reviews of the more than 7,000 study abroad programs around the world -- are finding that the recession changes the reviews students are writing about study abroad programs on their website.
"Students writing reviews on our site are more value-conscious about their programs than they were when we launched in September," Henry said. "They are more critical of programs that don't bring them the value they expect for the price-tag."
Henry cited a recent RateYourStudyAbroad review of an Australian program as an example. "It became apparent then that their questionnaire was only a marketing resource to bring out glowing responses," wrote the reviewer, "peterdellapenna"
Henry and John say that the recession has not stopped students from writing reviews of their study abroad programs, and that interest in study abroad still feels strong.
Said John, "I think there's still a lot of interest -- student newspapers at Syracuse University, Davidson College, Brigham Young, Santa Clara University all wrote stories about our site in January. I don't think they would have done that if study abroad was in some kind of precipitate decline."
RateYourStudyAbroad.com is the original and largest source for peer reviews of study abroad programs offered all over the world. It has been featured in several college publications since January of 2009, informally endorsed by the Institute of International Education, and attracted a growing base of student interest.
