Universities UK is holding back ‘holding back’ on demands to resume Erasmus programs, however optimistic amid discussion ton youth mobility.
English universities are calling on the government to find a way to resume the flow of students from the EU to Great Britain after Brexit, as well as to possibly return to the Erasmus exchange programme.
However, as Keir Starmer gets ready for his first-ever bilateral meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, on Wednesday, British universities say they’re taking a “watch and wait” stance to avoid inciting a rerun of the “toxic” Brexit debate over immigration.
The chief executive of Universities UK, Vivienne Stern, stated, “We regret the fact that we have lost a flow of really good European students into the UK.” However, she recognized the ‘toxic’ domestic politics surrounding the prospect of EU citizens’ returns at the scale of education to education in the UK.
She stated, “It’s not in our interest for the government to end up caught in a kind of toxic debate about immigration domestically because, in the end, that is going to hurt us badly if it drives the government to clamp down on immigration in other ways.”
Speaking in New York on Friday, the Prime Minister of the UK seemed to have softened his resistance to the idea of holiday stints. He stated that there were “no plans for a youth mobility scheme,” but he described the meeting on Wednesday as “important.”
According to EU sources, the purpose of the meeting is to seal a political deal that will enable a work program covering a range of subjects, such as security and defence, as well as the potential for a veterinary agreement to be outlined as part of a larger “reset” in relations between the EU and the UK.
The idea is that both parties would collaborate for the next six weeks, teasing out the short-term and longer-term negotiation pathways, with an EU-UK summit in spring next year.
Until now, the majority of attention has been directed toward an EU plan from April for a youth mobility scheme that would permit individuals under thirty to study or work overseas for a limited period to revive post-Brexit opportunities for youth.
However, there has been little political discussion of the Erasmus student exchange program, which allowed approximately 15,000 British students to study at an EU university for one year before Brexit.
The United Kingdom tried to negotiate a deal to remain an associate member of Erasmus; however, the financial pressure rested disproportionately with the UK, and universities would have had to bear the cost of more students coming.
Reports from the EU show that in 2018/2019, 17,975 students came to the UK, almost twice the number of British students, 9,908, who went to the EU. Earlier, 9,540 UK citizens went to EU universities, as compared to 18,839 EU citizens who came to British universities.
But Stern says one option is to go back to the “correction mechanism” that was constructed into the hard-fought deal for associate membership of the EU’s Horizon science program.
Following months of brinkmanship in 2019, Lord Frost finally reached a deal that permitted the United Kingdom to claw back money if it paid more into Horizon than it received.
Universities UK also thinks that elements of Turing, the British replacement mobility scheme, provide fresh ideas on student exchanges for future negotiations.
This year, Turing is expected to be taken up by 23,000 students. It offers four-week internships, whereas Erasmus permits study for a maximum of 12 months. In addition to Erasmus, it permits summer learning and career-focused programs instead of academic ones, which would boost enrollment in underprivileged areas.
Stern claims to be “holding back” any government enquiries on Erasmus and hasn’t “pinned our colours to the mast” so that they can see how the discussions unfold.
She states that it was “absolutely fantastic” that the youth and students were “central” to the debate about the reset in relations with the EU.
However, she added that they did not want to be proscriptive or a bargaining chip: “We also get a tiny bit uncomfortable when you think that something which is extremely important to us might be bound up in big politics.”
