Education Abroad

All business majors who want to complete a full semester abroad at a foreign university and use any of the courses taken (business or non-business, lower-division or upper-division) toward their B.B.A. degree must be pre-approved by Coles to do so.

Non-business majors who want credit for any business courses on a semester abroad must also be pre-approved by Coles for that credit.

Important: Formal requests to participate in semester abroad programs must be submitted to Coles at least 30 days in advance of when an approval decision is needed. In addition to the request form, you will be required to submit course descriptions for the business courses you want to take, plus information about the foreign university and its degree programs.

You need to provide not only the business courses you would most like to take, but also several backups in case some of them cannot be approved. Please be aware that many foreign universities use credit systems that are not equal to semester hours. (For example, if you attend a university using the ECTS credit system, you will have to take 6 ECTS credits to earn 3 semester hours.) It is best to work with a Coles Professional Advisor on a draft of the request form before completing the one to be used for your formal request.

If you are a business major and you want to take both business and non-business courses in a semester abroad program, the formal pre-approval request form must be signed by the non-business departments to indicate their course approvals prior to your submission of your form to Coles for approval of your entire set of courses.

KSU has agreements with some foreign universities for semester abroad programs. (The KSU Education Abroad Office can tell you which ones.) If you choose one of these programs, you will be registered for KSU course equivalents, and they will automatically show up on your KSU record. If you choose a foreign university that does not have an agreement with KSU, there is no guarantee that the credit will be accepted at KSU. You will have to get your foreign transcript evaluated by a special translation and evaluation reporting organization after you have completed the semester abroad, and at that time KSU will evaluate their special report to determine if you get any transfer credit.

In this situation, even with Coles pre-approval, you will not get credit toward your B.B.A. degree if your foreign credit is not accepted by KSU or if it comes in at a lower level than what was pre-approved. And there is no way to correct the problem credits after the semester abroad has been completed.

For those reasons, Coles strongly recommends that students do a semester abroad only at a university with which KSU has an agreement.