No matter that Castro runs one of the most repressive regimes in the world, according to several agencies of which the reader might have heard, including the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The students will be involved in what the Woodland, Calif., Daily Democrat described as an "intensive 10-week experience filled with side trips across the island to African-Cuban and other cultural enclaves, Spanish and music classes, and individual ethnographic studies of Cubans."

The students will be coughing up nearly $11,000 each for the 10-week excursion.

The costs appear to be exorbitant, considering that the average Cuban lives on less than $30 a month.

Cal-Davis says that almost half of the $11,000 tab is due to Cuban government fees on top of round-trip airfare, housing, meals, travel and sundry expenses.

The university said the bill is higher than the costs for students living off campus to attend UC-Davis for a quarter. Several of the students will be attending with the help of financial aid, no doubt taxpayer supported.

By comparison, a similar quarter-long educational program this coming spring that will go to London, where living expenses are considerably higher than in Cuba, will cost students about $500 less.

Marc Blanchard, a Cuba cultural scholar who has visited the island more than a dozen times in the past decade, told the Democrat, "I take kids abroad to Paris every summer for a class on expatriate literature but it's not a big deal: They have corn flakes and cell phones, and everybody speaks English. They will have none of that in Cuba."

"This is one of the last non-global places on the planet," added his co-instructor, music professor Pablo Ortiz, who failed to note that it is also one of the last Stalinist dictatorships on the planet.

Students will take four classes during the quarter. Along the way some will interview popular musicians to create ethnographic studies of an elite group of people who, because of their popularity among tourists, earn as much as $40 an hour compared to the $20-$40 per month earned by lawyers, professors and doctors.

Apparently, the proportional discrepancy between the salaries of entertainers and professionals is not much different than it is in America, but we digress.

Blanchard and Ortiz have planned a curriculum that will take the students to places where regular Cubans go - places rarely seen outside of Cuba - and away from the spots frequented by a majority of the world's tourists who visit Cuba, since those are off-limits to ordinary Cubans.

In Cuba, where food is rationed, they will be eating mostly pork, chicken, rice and beans, which the Democrat saw as a challenge for the vegetarians in the group.

They have been asked to bring vitamin supplements, aspirin and other medicines common in the United States, since they don't exist in any quantities in Cuba - except perhaps in Fidel Castro's medicine cabinet, from which we're sure he got plenty of medication after his recent fall in which he injured his leg.

Often water and electricity in the Communist paradise will be cut off during the day, and students will be totally dependent on public transportation, Blanchard said. To gain access to a computer or phone, they'll have to visit a hotel near their rooms in a converted Havana mansion, and probably do so under the watchful eyes of the DGI, the Cuban secret police.

Because students will have no access to automated teller machines or banks, they must bring cash for all of their expenses - but not greenbacks.

The Cuban government is engaging in usury these days, tacking on a 15 percent surcharge for the use of American dollars, so the class has been urged to exchange dollars for another currency, such as Canadian dollars or euros, before they leave on their junket.

Editor's note: