A semester abroad ... in Tinseltown

Forget about Paris and a semester at the Sorbonne. Who needs to study in Florence or struggle with Mandarin for just months in Beijing?

Instead, consider the allure of Burbank and the nearby Oakwood apartments. Think about Los Angeles' Wilshire district and the chance to speak like a Hollywood agent.

A growing number of U.S. colleges and universities, mostly from the East Coast and the South, are making something close to that pitch for what are in effect study-abroad programs in the Los Angeles area. And while programs in Italy often emphasize art and those in England literature, the focus here is squarely on the entertainment industry and on internships that might jump-start a Hollywood career.

Emerson College in Boston, the University of Texas at Austin, Boston University and Ithaca College in New York are among those that sponsor year-round or summer programs that bring students to Southern California. Others include Columbia College in Chicago, Temple University in Philadelphia, Elon University in North Carolina and a national consortium of Christian colleges.

The colleges enroll their students in classes on screenwriting, acting and agentry, and get them into apprenticeships -- mostly unpaid -- in television, movies, music or advertising.

In most cases, the programs are modeled after those for overseas studies. They take out-of-town students to a strange, interesting and potentially rewarding place far from home for education and fun. And like those others, the L.A. programs encourage students to mix with the natives but usually require them to live in university-affiliated housing, often at the Oakwood Toluca Hills or Park La Brea apartments.

"We joke that we are in a foreign country here," said Bill Linsman, who heads Boston University's 6-year-old Los Angeles Internship Program from a Wilshire Boulevard office. Most of the students are from the East Coast, and L.A.'s entertainment business "is a foreign culture" for them, he said.

The biggest lesson for the 67 Boston University students enrolled in the program this fall is that show business is serious business, he said. "When you look at the surface of Hollywood, you see sunglasses and blue jeans and tans and sitting around the pool. But dig deeper and you see it's dollars and cents."