Study abroad - so stressful

[StudyAbroad]

My son is doing a 4 year degree with a year study abroad. It is not a foreign language degree. The whole process has been fairly admin intensive and stressful from choosing which universities to apply to, housing, visa etc, but by far the most stressful aspect has been finding enough modules that both his home and host university would agree to. There have been many twists and turns, but since February he has been asking for help as he was struggling to find enough modules. He raised this with host university, home university study abroad team and his department study abroad person. He was always told to just keep looking.

Anyway he did this and found enough modules and then the timetable came out last week and he has a clash. He has been told by host university that it is too late to add more modules. 😡There was no way of him knowing there would be a clash before the deadline for choosing modules had passed.

He has emailed host and home university and is getting little to no support. They have all gone quiet on him.

It is just so demoralising. It feels like on paper it seems like a good idea, but in reality the host and home universes are not compatible and what the host is offering just doesn't work.

I am not sure what the point of this post is. Maybe to ask if others have found this a difficult process - what we should be doing? Who should we be pressuring to sort this out?

I think what’s unusual is that study abroad often doesn’t actually count for very much academically at all, so the modules are irrelevant. It’s unusual to do it in your third yet? It’s usually the second.

Hi, OP -

I am sure the timetable clashes are nothing new, so I have been wondering how the Dutch handle it. Do you know the answer? They may expect DS to do the same.

In some American unis enrolment closes in the Spring and re-opens in the Autumn. The first two weeks of term everything is in flux again. Students can ‘add’ and ‘drop’ course modules. It sounds hectic but it tends to work well.

Perhaps DS could investigate practices at the host uni and see if something similar is routine there?

I disagree that there is nothing the OP can do to help. Things can go unbelievably badly wrong in non-UK universities very quickly: governance standards in education in the UK are extremely high compared with all EU countries and the safety nets that we take for granted in the UK are not present. At the point the OP describes I would have already sent a lawyer-approved letter to the UK university reminding them of their contractual obligations to put in place everything necessary for DS to graduate.

On the point "DS is growing up": this might be appropriate in DS's home country but it is not appropriate to ask DS to navigate foreign systems unaided. In lots of countries parents are involved in navigating higher education for their adult children in ways that are completely foreign to UK parents. A friend of mine has just spent a couple of months accompanying her 20 year old son around their country while he does some extremely competitive examinations, paying for hotels and meals and giving moral support while her husband stays at home with their other children. This is completely normal in their country.

Y3 at my (excellent) uni

@WhatNextImScared

True, you cannot go abroad in your final year. We only send M(Subject) students abroad.

Same for my DDs university ( top ranked overall and for her subject).

Hi All, Just coming back to this as people are posting.

I am delighted to let you know that this has all been sorted. An extra module has been chosen that has no timetable clash. The host university have been very quick at responding and allowed him to choose something else.

To answer some questions - it is a 4 year Masters and so this year abroad will count towards his degree mark. Therefore his home university has to agree that the modules he has chosen are matched in terms of academics to what he would be doing in year three at home.

In February the list of what he could choose came out.

This was essentially a list of ALL courses the university has. However, the list for the academic year 25/26 was not out and therefore he had to select last year, could only select Science which computer science sits under, then choose those that were in English and were open to exchange students and at the correct level (i.e. not year 1 or year 2). he had to through all these courses and find those that were computer science.

When this list first came out there were about three options. I kid you not. Emailed home uni and host and was told by both to keep looking. No offer of help. Gradually more and more options were released. He would choose options and they would then be accepted or rejected by host uni. This process could take anything from 2-6 weeks. A LOT were rejected, for being too hard, too easy or with no explanation. Again DS emailed home and host uni asking for some help to work out what he could take - told to keep looking. He was at no point told to choose excess and then drop some.

Webinar from host uni told him to only select the number he would be taking as they don't want students to be accepted on to a module and then have it dropped. Therefore when he got his 5 for Autumn and Spring term he stopped.

These were agreed by home Uni as OK.

Then timetable comes out, we see a clash and the rest is detailed above.

DS may well have done something wrong in this process. He has ADHD and admin is not his strong point, But he has raised from February that he is struggling to piece together enough modules and at no point did anyone offer support or tell him he was doing it wrong.

I will say that both home and host uni have answered emails quickly, but essentially the answers are always to just keep looking.

But I think what I find frustrating is that there seems to be a mismatch between how the universities work - so the process just hasn't worked if that makes sense?

I am not sure what the home university requires, the host can offer. It has felt like trying to get a square peg in to a round hole.

DD is home after a year in The Netherlands (Leiden). Fortunately, her year’s study doesn’t count towards her degree, all she had to do was pass, which she did with flying colours. But the admin was a nightmare, and she was instrumental in getting the department to start publishing their timetables in advance so students wouldn’t choose courses that clashed (apparently they hadn’t thought of that before…). She had to be a squeaky wheel, and the experience was excellent for her confidence.

One thing she fell foul of - her home university was supposed to ensure she had health insurance (a legal requirement in The Netherlands), and the one time she needed medical advice, she called her home university to be told she wasn’t on their ‘list’. Please make sure your DS has details of his insurance to hand rather than trusting his home uni!

But the year abroad was amazing for my DD, she made so many new friends from all over the world, we all fell in love with The Netherlands, she travelled around Europe cheaply and freely, and it was absolutely the best experience. I hope your son enjoys it as much as she did!

Thanks @EmmaStone DS is also Leiden. I am actually very grateful to hear that you found the admin a nightmare too as I was starting to feel I was going mad.

Well, despite your DD best efforts they are in fact not publishing the timetable.

@EmmaStone I have sent you a PM

Fantastic that this has been sorted out.

"But I think what I find frustrating is that there seems to be a mismatch between how the universities work - so the process just hasn't worked if that makes sense?"

Universities (and indeed any bureaucracy) work in unbelievably different ways from one country to the next! It's so easy when you have only ever lived in your home country to live as if the structures of systems were somehow a universal reality. They aren't: they are human inventions specific to particular societies. I think it is a huge ask of young people on years abroad to navigate them and this is one of the underlying goals of Erasmus, to make study abroad easier.

PP and I have given examples of how the home university supports the student when things go pear shaped. Thinking far ahead, the university will be well aware that The Office for Students (the mediator for HE) is very likely to see it this way, but that should not be a primary consideration because everyone (at the home university) is on the same side here.

Pleased (and unsurprised) this has been sorted. And lo! within a week. Glad on your behalf OP that you didn't wade in and 'bang some heads together'...

Great news, OP! Most students IME have a great year in spite of the hiccoughs. Possibly the confidence gained by navigating them is part of it, as @EmmaStone suggests.

Again, best wishes to DS.

@WhatNextImScared It certainly can count. For masters courses it does. It replaces y3 here so it must be equivalent.

With MFL degrees it can be different. My DD was required to complete X number of modules which had to include translation at each university. The uni abroad had to sign these off and there was some disagreement about whether uk dc took exams or not at the Italian uni. But it’s Italy! However the main work which counted was research and writing about 2 topics based on the two countries she visited. A wide remit but uk uni approved the topics. The work was then marked and graded. So dc do their language study, improve their listening and speaking skills, live abroad, take the required modules, take exams possibly and do their uk work too. I suspect not all unis do this but saying the year abroad doesn’t count is not correct for many students. DDs friend doing a MEng had the whole year count at the Grande Ecole he attended. Taught in French, not English.

Interesting to read this thread. Dd going to NTU in Singapore.
She has had a lot of communication from them. Only hickup was when her home uni had forgotten to complete something.
Her year is an extra year. So for BSc degree it would be 4 instead of 3, integrated master 5 instead of 4 years.
Only have to pass the year.
This is different from Durham, where grades abroad counts for final degree, and which was one of the reasons she turned it down.

Dd startes off with choosing 10 modules from a list for the current year for the 5 she needs.
Host and home uni needed to approve.
Got told later 2 modules not running for coming year so chose 2 other ones.
Has now got her 5 modules with no clashes.

@Tosingapore Marks usually count when the degree is not over an extended period. It’s not seen as a jolly when it matters.

My DD’s course was an Integrated Science Masters degree, so 5 years in total. She should have had the choice of going after year 1, but that was 2020 and Japan did not accept any foreign students. Her home uni advised doing her 2nd year with them and then seeing what transpired. She enrolled in Autumn 2021, originally studying remotely until she got a visa in March 2022 and went out in April. Bless her, she was so desperate that she actually did all the classes in real time, going to bed at 9pm, getting up for a lecture at 2am GMT (hoodie over PJs) then back to sleep later.

Like someone else’s DC, she only had to pass the modules. Despite missing a big chunk of it, she had an amazing time and flew back earlier this year to meet some of the friends she made there.

My son did his whole degree abroad and is now heading back to do his masters. Just go with it. Don't stress

@Malbecfanif it’s the standard 4 year masters with y3 abroad, it all counts. Lots of dc don’t want the expense of 5 years.