2008 resulted in the cutting of institutional subsidies for many field schools in the US, and many of them now charge the full costs of the program. Universities rarely monitor the quality of the field schools they offer as these are off campus, typically small in scale and effective monitoring requires significant investment of resources. The result is that university-based field schools are effectively unmonitored and have significant differences in quality. Independent field schools In recent decades, independent and highly specialized academic organizations have emerged that run field schools independent of universities. Such organizations are dedicated operators of research-based field schools and use economies of scale to produce quality programs. Students from any university may apply to such programs. The School for Field Studies in ecology, Sea Semester in marine biology, the Institute for Field Research in archaeology, and Field School in marine biology and environmental studies are examples of such high end organizations. References Higher education Academic terminology