Katrina's Academic Victims

College Students Seek Asylum In Hurricane's Wake

(CBS)  Other students have gone abroad. Universities in Germany, Israel, Italy, England and elsewhere overseas offered students reduced tuitions or full scholarships to come and study.

Jane Tardo, a third-year student at the University of New Orleans, accepted an offer from the University of Innsbruck in Austria to study there, tuition-free, for the semester. Although Tardo noted that many of her friends opted to be close to their families after such a tragedy, the opportunity to go overseas was almost irresistible for the international studies major.

"I have always wanted to study abroad... [and] I'm extremely grateful for this chance to go for mostly free," Tardo said via e-mail.

But while some are acclimating to new cultural environments, others are adjusting to nine-to-five work schedules.

Loyola University New Orleans junior Ashley Genz-Foster said she hoped to enroll at Loyola University Chicago, closer to her home in Burlington, Iowa, but the deadline was closing in on her and she did not even apply. Instead, the English major is doing an internship at her local paper, The Hawk Eye.

Genz-Foster said that many of her friends who are seniors chose not to take classes elsewhere and are getting work experience like she is, "because they don’t want to spend part of their senior year at another school."

"[It is] pretty cool that they've taken this situation and turned it into something that can better their future," she said.

In fact, some students took that even more literally, not just bettering their own futures, but others' too.

Although they are away from campus right now, Tulane juniors Adam Hawf of Columbia, Mo., Kevin Lander of Boulder, Colo., Stephen Richer of Salt Lake City and Aaron Rubens of Kalamazoo, Mich., are helping from afar.

The men established a volunteer-based fundraising organization – the New Orleans Hurricane Fund – that has raised over $46,000 to date and offers students the ability to sign up online to volunteer with relief efforts.

Glenna Gross, a Tulane senior, points out that the situation is quite different for freshman than those with more established ties to their schools. Although all of her friends will be returning in January, she is not so sure about new students.

She said, "Not every freshman is going to have the same desire to return in January as the upperclassmen, whether it be because they are scared, confused or settled at their new school."