Is anyone’s DC doing their year abroad in September?

[MrsSchadenfreude]

DD1 is waiting to see if it goes ahead. She is very stressed about it - if she has to do her third year here she will struggle to find somewhere to live, and the Department will have twice the number of students. There doesn’t seem to be any contingency planning in place.

But they may not have overseas students coming here, which may free up some accommodation.

Private student halls are a total rip-off, though.

She wouldn’t be in private student halls. Not in y3.

I can see this is a huge concern. I think the picture isn’t clear at the moment. What was she doing? Work, British Council or University? I think they will wait and see what happens but you also need to think about accommodation abroad. I think students are left in a very difficult situation right now.

University in France. All sorted and set up before this shit.

I think you will have to be guided by France then and their views on allowing students into the universities. My DD went to Geneva and Bologna some years ago now and I know it would have been awful to have been in the current situation and not knowing what was going to happen. Such a nightmare on so many fronts.

My DD is supposed to be going to Shanghai in September. No contingency plan either that I’m aware of.

Yep. Same here. Uni hope it'll happen from January onwards

@Sunndowne - what are they supposed to do for the first term? Still online learning? DD won’t have anywhere to live otherwise!

No idea. Work on project. She heard a rumour they may put on intensive language courses.

We are hoping she can go to her uni town, get a room and use the libraries to get her YA project started/done. Maybe goes as soon as borders open. Room wise, she was told by interns better to get Airbnb and choose accommodation when there. Can be scams otherwise. We were hoping to go with her to do this.

I suspect there will be loads of accommodation available under circumstances.

It is all just so disappointing.

A friend's son is supposed to be going to a university in Florida and has not been told if it will go ahead but the presumption is it will.

Several friends of my DC have been told yesterday that the year abroad will not be going ahead.
Russell Group uni placements in US and Australia. Humanities subjects.
I feel so sorry for this generation of students.

Ahh. That is not good news!

The bigger problem is the language students though because of language acquisition. It’s difficult to replicate that when all of the 3rd year students should be abroad. For other students going on non language courses it’s not vital because the courses will be running here for the majority not going abroad in their third year. For MFL students, 100% go abroad and the universities don’t have courses running here for them in their third year so anything offered will never be the same. It could be awful for them.

@BubblesBuddy exactly. DD’s degree is French. I can’t begin to think what the contingency would be.

The University where I work has cancelled all study abroad placements for 2020/21.

@Monkeybunkey - how will this work for those doing language degrees?

Two of my dds study MFL. Dd1’s year abroad this last academic year has been a complete disaster. Dd2 is at Bristol and is meant to be studying in Europe for her third year, but we can’t see that happening at the moment.

Dds are not getting too stressed though and will see if they can find work as a language assistant in a school in the UK.

My eldest is due to go. They have done applications but waiting now.
No accommodation after June as planning to travel until uni started.

I suppose if they are opening universities online only like UK universities are considering, you may as well be here to the first term online as in eg France or Spain. On the other hand, if they have a quarantine period for people returning/arriving from abroad there's something to be said for getting that out of the way while you are studying online and then you can get straight into the student experience once it starts. The biggest problem as I see it is having to stay for a year to avoid multiple periods of quarantine, so maybe not coming home for Christmas or Easter.

German schools are already reopening in parts, so I imagine their language assistants will operate as usual from September. If people were going to do jobs I guess it depends if the job is still there.

Hopefully it will be ok. It must be so disappointing - my year out was the best year of my life!

@MrsSchadenfreude As far as I know, students are being given the option of swapping their 3rd and 4th years (so effectively deferring their year abroad to 2021/22 and doing their third taught year of study next year) or transferring to the standard 3-year course (without the year abroad) and completing next year.

That could mean double the number of students going though (3rd and 4th years) so where will the places come from? There is already a shortage of some placements and university courses at some of the more sought after universities. Plus the Brexit debacle won’t help. I feel so sorry for anyone caught up in this.

This was supposed to be the last year with Erasmus funding too.

@Monkeybunkey but how would that work? When would they do their finals? DD1 said that her uni won’t have the capacity to have year three and year four together. And those who have done a year abroad are going to have much better French than those who haven’t. And yes, this was the last year for Erasmus.

Dd is supposed to be going to France for y3 as a language assistant with the British Council and has heard nothing from them.

Her uni has hedged its bets by getting them to choose the modules they would want if the year abroad has to be cancelled but has given no other guidance on what might happen.

Erasmus has been supplanted by individual agreements at DDs former university. It says so on their web site. However nothing will get around missing Y3 abroad.