The Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act, a bill that would authorize $80 million in grants for students hoping to study abroad, is at risk of failing in the Senate this session.

A cloture motion on the bill failed to pass in July, and the bill is unlikely to be brought back to the floor before Congress adjourns.

Christine Gemignani, program coordinator for the Study Abroad Center, said the top reasons students do not study abroad are the beliefs that study abroad could delay graduation or that it is not affordable. If the bill were to pass, Gemignani believes the number of students studying abroad would increase.

If the bill is passed, Gemignani said she expects colleges and universities may have a hard time supplying money for the increase in demand for study abroad trips. If the bill were to fail, however, the number of students studying abroad would not be drastically different. Gemignani said the number of study abroad students has been consistently increasing and would continue to grow even if the bill fails.

According to data provided by the ISU Study Abroad Center, approximately 1,200 students studied abroad during the 2007-’08 school year. The most popular study abroad destinations were Italy, Spain, Australia, England and China. An overwhelming majority of students who studied abroad were Caucasian; out of about 1,200 students, 1,001 considered themselves to be white.

The bill aspires to help send one million undergraduate students abroad annually, increase the number of minority, low-income and first-generation students studying abroad, and encourage students to study in developing countries and other “nontraditional study abroad locations.”

The bill was introduced in the House of Representatives in March 2007 by representatives Tom Lantos (D-Ca.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla). In June, members of the House voted unanimously to pass an amended version of the bill. Once the bill reached the Senate, however, it ran into trouble.  

In July, the Study Abroad Act was combined with other bills under a new name, “The Advancing America’s Priorities Act.” The new act was much more controversial than the original Study Abroad bill and many Senators, including Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (R), refused to support it.

“The Advancing America’s Priorities Act was a compilation of tens of pieces of legislation that was put together by Majority Leader [Harry] Reid,” said Beth Levine, press secretary for Sen. Grassley. “Senator Grassley supported some of the bills in this omnibus package, but some of the bills had objections from various Senators because of each of their costs, duplicative nature or ineffective use of finite resources.”