Cultural Opportunities Indiana University's Bloomington Campus and the surrounding community combine the attractions of rural and urban culture. The Bloomington community offers a progressive, cosmopolitan culture with a wide variety of shops, restaurants, services, and social and cultural activities. Part of its interesting international cultural diversity results from the fact that Indiana University Bloomington ranks among the top thirty campuses in the United States in the number of foreign students. The internationally renowned Indiana University School of Music offers a full season of opera and ballet performances as well as numerous free concerts and recitals by students and members of the faculty. Ranked number one in the nation in music performance, the School of Music annually offers over a thousand free performances in opera, symphony orchestra music, chamber music, vocal music, jazz, and dance.
Local clubs offer a wide variety of live blues, jazz, folk, and rock performances.
Broadway shows and modern dance companies appear regularly on campus, supplementing the Department of Theatre and Drama's productions of new plays and classics. Indiana University's Art Museum, designed by I.M. Pei, houses one of the best academic collections in the country and regularly hosts a number of outstanding traveling art shows. Special Programs Indiana University also offers its students distinctive courses in American studies, women's studies, Afro-American studies, Jewish studies, comparative literature, folklore, semiotics, medieval and Renaissance studies, Victorian studies, film studies, textual studies, and a broad spectrum of foreign languages. Cost of Living Rand McNally has selected Bloomington, Indiana, as one of the eight most desirable places to live in the nation based on personal safety, climate, housing, services, leisure activities, and the cost of living. A recent cost of living study of sixteen U.S. cities with major graduate schools revealed that Bloomington is one of the four least expensive of the cities in which to live.