Minnesota lawmakers are poised to pass legislation requiring colleges to report on the safety of study abroad programs; bill in New York would mandate disclosure of financial relationships with providers.

Inside Higher Ed’s Elizabeth Redden offers these details:

…The Minnesota proposal, which has been included as a provision of the state budget bill and therefore looks likely to pass, would require colleges to disclose information about the safety records of their education abroad programs.

Meanwhile the New York proposal, a version of which was first introduced in 2008 in the wake of Attorney General (now Governor) Andrew M. Cuomo’s investigations into alleged conflicts of interest in study abroad programs, would require colleges to disclose information about their financial relationships with study abroad providers. That bill made something of a resurgence last week, clearing the Senate Higher Education Committee, though – having not yet been voted on by the full Senate or Assembly – it has a long way to go before becoming law.

…The Minnesota legislation would require the state’s colleges to file annual reports on student deaths and accidents and illnesses that require hospitalization. An earlier draft of the bill would also have required institutions to report incidents of sexual assault, but that provision was struck due to concerns about student privacy (if two students attend a program in Turkey and the university reports one sexual assault, the victim could be all too easily identifiable).

Chief among the advocates for the legislation is the Minnesota-based ClearCause foundation, which calls for federal oversight of education abroad programs and laws mandating minimum study abroad safety standards. The nonprofit organization was founded by Allen and Sheryl Hill, whose teenaged son, Tyler, died while participating in a People to People exchange program in Japan.

…The New York bill, meanwhile, would require colleges to disclose any “perquisites” that colleges receive from study abroad programs in which their students participate, including expenses paid by study abroad providers for university employee travel, lodging, food or entertainment, as well as any “direct financial benefit realized by a college/university as a result of its students attending a particular study abroad program.”

Again, the bill can be traced back to the 2007-8 Cuomo investigations into whether study abroad offices were being unduly influenced by perks like free or subsidized overseas travel and commissions on student fees. In addition to calling for disclosure of “perquisites,” the bill also stipulates that, in cases in which the university charges its regular tuition rates for a semester abroad, the university must disclose “the actual costs of the study abroad program paid by such college/university” upon request…