Erasmus - on the way back?

[OhDear111]

Good news? What could go wrong?

@OttersMayHaveShifted Apologies for garbled post! My DDs old university maintained existing links but the cost of going was placed on the shoulders of parents if dc were studying and not working and of course visas are now a necessary evil. Overall though, I hope young people do want to study or work abroad and appreciate the benefits of doing so. I would like to think all reasonable older people did too.

It's good that lots non-MFL degrees now offer a year abroad option, but it's sad that MFL degrees and MFL in general are so low in popularity. I teach at a grammar school which is about to make it no longer compulsory to do a language for GCSE.

Agree.
But all I’ve heard is ‘how good it was for Sohie’s gap yah’…

And still no one explains why it would be impossible to provide other opportunities beside Erasmus.

And no one is going to take seriously complaints about cost after the financial disaster of Brexit.

@LupaMoonhowl I don’t think you understand Erasmus. For my dd it funded her 3rd year (out of 4) which was done at 2 universities abroad. It was designed so parents and students would not be out of pocket and anyone who qualified could go. It’s a system used throughout Europe. A gap year is before university, not during it so maybe get betted information before you have a go at people. On the third year abroad students swap places with other university students. The idea is to enhance their language acquisition, study subjects at the host university they might not study in the uk, and experience the culture of another country. It often has a lasting positive effect and certainly promotes friendship and understanding . A gap year it isn’t. It’s completely different.

Erasmus is not for gap years. Gap years are between leaving school and starting uni and are not part of studies. They are privately funded by the young person and their family. Not everyone does a gap year or can afford to do it unless it involves them doing paid work.

Erasmus is to help fund time spent abroad as part of studies whilst at uni, for example, a languages degree.

I am delighted that we will be rejoining Erasmus. About time too. We should never have left it. In fact, I'm not sure we were actually required to leave it when Brexshit happened. Were we not offered the opportunity to keep our membership of Erasmus? Then both Theresa May and Boris Johnson refused to even get consider it, like the twats that they both were.

The Turing scheme was utterly crap. My DD had to spend time on South America as part of her languages degree and got nothing from it.

Erasmus is now more global than it used to be. It's high time we rejoined.

I personally think that we should also be rejoining the EU if they would have us back, but hey, one step at a time I suppose.

So is this bad news for students to want to study outside Europe, who would previously been eligible for Turing funding?

Is Erasmus funding only really beneficial to richer students who want to study in Europe?

I don't agree with OhDear's push for priority for "compulsory" students.

In my EU country the Erasmus funding allocation is based mostly on grades, application and places available, but someone studying languages isn't more deserving by default than someone studying mathematics.

Suggesting automatic preference for limited Erasmus places based on subject sounds very unfair. Moreover, it doesn't sound in the spirit of erasmus - if UK was sending only/mostly "MFL" students, who would you expect to receive back? People studying that specific language on native tongue level at home? People studying that language as foreign language at home? That's pretty useless for the rest of the Europe

Sounds to me the the issue are courses with compulsory year abroad - it sounds that they should be taken only by people ready to self-fund the year. Are there no options to study languages without that compulsory year abroad element? In my EU country the abroad is not compulsory and language students who don't get Erasmus are applying for shorter options like summer schools for which it is easier to get funding.

@ThreeSixtyTwo A MFL student is absolutely a priority. It’s part of the course! I hope Erasmus does give opportunities to many but we cannot have those who must go disadvantaged. We need more to study MFL and telling them they aren’t a priority is one more stab at MFL and of course stem conquers all! We do need more MFL students here and to ensure their degree has the year abroad as a priority or it’s seriously dumbed down. Not so with maths!

If you think Erasmus funds gap years, you're not qualified to opine on the matter.

This approach is disadvantaging everyone outside of MFL.
It just sounds weird that someone should get priority just because they applied for the correct program.
And it sounds impractical as well. If fhe funding is prioritised but not guaranteed, it will still works only for students from families potentially able to self fund.

So what places will the UK offer to incoming students if it sends only/mainly MFL ones away?

The Turing scheme was established to support students from families whose economic circumstances could not have supported them. It had some similarities to Erasmus, but had a socio-economic 'lever' and applied to international exchanges, not just EU exchanges.

It was not devolved to individual universities but the contract was given (by the glorious B. Johnson pretending to be a leader) to Capita.

There are many degrees where there is either a compulsory or optional year abroad, not just Modern Languages. There is a fair bit of special pleading on this thread, from parents who don't understand the broader policy issues.

So what places will the UK offer to incoming students if it sends only/mainly MFL ones away?

In my experience of teaching in harts & humanities (but not languages), we had a variety of Erasmus students with us for a semester/term or a year.

The old Erasmus scheme had far more students from the rest of the EU coming to us, than UK students going to other EU countries. UK students had a tendency to be quite parochial. Partly because our degree structure & system is different than the rest of the EU, and partly because of British provincialism.

I really enjoyed teaching German Erasmus students, in particular - often their English (written & spoken) was so much better than UK native speakers, and they worked really hard - soaked up the way we teach (teaching in Germany & France is far less coddling of undergrads).

@ParmaVioletTea Optional is not compulsory. Different universities found there were various issues with Turing and resulted in lack of funding for students with a compulsory year abroad. Ideally all should be able to go but you can out get up to speed in a MFL or two by staying here. You can get an amazing maths or engineering degree here. There’s no need for a year abroad but money was diverted to optional away from compulsory. Hopefully Erasmus stops that.

The universities here take incoming students who are attending lectures in English and improving their English skills as well as learning about our culture. Some universities (eg Oxford) don’t have great links with European universities for their MFL students but others (eg Bristol) do. Bristol says Turing funding goes to them and it doesn’t cover enough of their students. They make up the shortfall but it’s deprived students only and therefore a huge financial input is required from other parents who might not be well off at all. That’s not right for a compulsory year abroad.

There are not many undergrad degrees with a compulsory year abroad. There are more with optional years abroad which are not guaranteed. These are often to English speaking countries where a MFL isn’t needed but it’s very different to learning the MFL abroad as a compulsory element that cannot be replicated in the uk.

Yes, in past the UK was target for students from many different fields.

In my experience it works the best if one department is both sending and receiving students (not necessarily in the same quantity, but at least being ready to and having that experience). So I was curious, how does the OP imagine this would work if the MFL students were sent with a priority.

I went on a postgraduate year to the USA but it was more a teaching fellowship (I earned a salary) and not just for study. It was an amazing year and taught me a lot about how American universities work. It was also a rewarding cultural and networking experience.

That sounds like a design flaw in those programs with compulsory year abroad.
If they can't teach the content at home and don't have the funding available for their students, they should be clear it is a self-funding program. Not whine and demand priority money from shared funds.

For one, it isn't necessary to plan a full year abroad to improve the language- for example planning the abroad element as a 4 weeks summer school/volunteering scheme after y1 and one semester later would have very similar benefit and cost half the money.

The universities here take incoming students who are attending lectures in English and improving their English skills as well as learning about our culture.
It's quite different case than getting "up to speed" in a foreign language. The students coming to the UK on Erasmus are generally quite proficient in English and know a bit about the culture. They want to study their actual subject, understand how differently it is taught in the UK, what is considered a basic knowledge here compared to their home country, make connections for their future PHDs and so on.
And it works the best if the same department is both sending and receiving students, so they treat it as a real exchange and encourage their students to go as well. It is perfectly possible to study your subject in English in many EU countries, you'd just take a short local language course there for everyday convenience, but all subjects and communication with the university would be in English.

@ThreeSixtyTwo ? Do you know anything about MFL degrees? How do you teach immersion in a culture of the MFL at the uk university? It’s impossible and MFL undergrads here have always had third year abroad. MFL learning isn’t from a computer and many grads have the year marked too.

If you look around, other countries have different concept of foreign language degrees and manage.

I'm mostly questioning the need for a full year abroad being compulsory for finishing the degree - I've already suggested a shorter stay earlier and a semestral stay later as a cheaper alternative.

Totally agree with this .. it should be means tested at least

@ThreeSixtyTwo Goodness me! These degrees have been like this for decades. Why should they be dumbed down and changed? We don’t miss out a whole year of maths and think it’s ok do we? Two MFLs is two semesters abroad. One in each country. That’s the minimum and no, it’s not a post degree option! It’s part of the degree and is examined or gets credits. It’s part of the degree and should continue to be do. Why should it be means tested? University costs parents enough as it is. Turing was means tested and was a shit show.

If the only way to make this format work is grabbing all money from the shared pot, the format doesn't work.

@ThreeSixtyTwo Don’t be ridiculous! Of course it’s not ALL the money, and it never was. I do suggest you read up on MFL degrees and what is expected and who Erasmus pays for. Why do you think with falling MFL grad numbers they will take all the money from a more generous scheme?! That’s totally bizarre thinking. The whole point is there’s more money for exchanges and learning abroad. That’s a good thing and doesn’t disadvantage many MFL students who must go abroad as Turing does. Erasmus is not just funding MFL students!

@ThreeSixtyTwo
I think that MFL learning in the UK is very different to parts of Europe.
Even the students who have studied the language at A level and receive an A grade really have only basic skills in the language. We are talking maybe a highish B1 on the international scale, a level which my bright 14 year old students achieve in a country where English teaching is pretty poor. I imagine in Northern Europe this level would be achieved much earlier.

This is why it really is important for students who are taking language degrees in the UK to have that time abroad and have a chance to really accelerate their learning. I agree that it would be amazing for students doing any degree to be able to go, like it is in the country where I live, but if the UK doesn’t prioritise its MFL students, then in my opinion it won’t be long before people stop choosing them altogether.

For those suggesting Erasmus is only for University students this is not the case - it is much broader for apprentices, school pupils, those in FE, youth groups etc ie almost any young people would be able to travel - see this from gov.uk