Initially, I had a lot of faith in Arcadia. We had what seemed like 2 solid, experienced residential directors. A few nights into the program, we met students who did the Arcadia summer program, and they raved about the directors. I liked that there were only about 15 students in the program. The size afforded as more attention from our directors/teachers, and it almost worked in a home-stay type experience by having a sort of home base.

About 3 or 4 weeks into our stay, there was some drama within Arcadia's administration, supposedly surrounding the syllabus of the core course. We were notified that our resident directors had "resigned". We were told that a director from their London program would come to fill in until they replaced the directors. Instantly, we were fearful that our new director would not have the knowledge of the city, UCT, or our personal needs that the previous directors had.
We were absolutely right.
Since the resignation, we have basically been floaters within the bureaucracy of Arcadia. They have yet to select new resident directors, and have instead stuck us with the London director, who treats his stay here like a vacation and treats us like a nuisance, and a recent graduate of UCT as a sort of liaison. As a united group of 15, we have battled Arcadia on several issues, particularly their failure to deliver promised activities. In selecting a program, most of us considered the additional activities, such as an overnight retreat and excursions to places like Cape Point and Hermanus. Not only did we have to remind Arcadia that they promised said activities, but it has been like pulling teeth trying to convince them to organize let alone sponsor excursions which other programs provide to their students free of charge or complication.
I will end my critique of Arcadia with one final mention. Not only has the staff neglected us and wrote our semester off as a transition period gone wrong, but they have done so most unprofessionally. As students, we have been forwarded e-mails sent between members of administration which discuss the members of my program (all paying students) as being "clingy" and pitifully dependent on Arcadia, having "out of whack" expectations, and characteristically different from other study abroad students in that we "should, by this time, be so occupied with [local] friends" that we should be inconvenienced by anything related to Arcadia, let alone be asking for more group activities. For not only failing to deliver a comparable study abroad program to its competitors, but also making its participating customers feel like friendless Frankensteins, Arcadia does not deserve the future business of Rice University or any other academic institution for that matter.