The Maricopa County Community College District has suspended all international travel at its 10 colleges in the wake of a big article in Sunday’s Arizona Republic that described how administrators, faculty members, board members, and other officials had spent some $324,000 in the last five years on all-expense-paid trips to Europe and other destinations.

Officials said the trips had been intended to enhance the college’s international stature and its ties to colleges abroad. And it’s certainly true that some community colleges are increasingly looking abroad for students (The Chronicle, February 11, 2005) and are doing other international outreach that once was the province of four-year institutions.

But the Republic found that Maricopa’s Mesa Community College had sent officials on foreign trips far out of proportion to other community colleges. And while overseas, the officials lived it up, the newspaper reported, with lavish meals and luxury hotels. On one trip to the Netherlands and England, for example, a team from Mesa spent “two days traveling, three days in meetings and official functions, and six days on trips and tours,” including sightseeing and shopping. The newspaper did not say whether the cost of shopping was subsidized by the college.