UK pulls out of EU’s ‘extremely expensive’
Erasmus scheme
UK’s replacement program will be called Turing scheme,
Boris Johnson announces.
The U.K. has withdrawn from the Erasmus+
university-exchange scheme
BY CRISTINA
GALLARDO
December
24, 2020 6:26 pm
LONDON —
British students will not be able to study at European universities with an
Erasmus+ grant from 2021 and neither will EU students in the U.K., after the
U.K. declined to continue participating in the EU’s flagship student mobility
scheme.
Prime
Minister Boris Johnson confirmed news first reported by POLITICO that a deal
with the EU on Erasmus+ had been impossible because it was deemed by London as
too expensive.
However, he
confirmed plans to launch a domestic scheme to help British students going to
universities in and out of Europe. It will be called the Turing scheme, after
mathematician Alan Turing, Johnson announced.
Speaking at
a press conference from inside Downing Street on Thursday, Johnson said
breaking away from Erasmus+ was a “tough decision."
“The issue
really was that the U.K. is a massive net contributor to the continent’s
higher-education economy because over the last decades we had so many EU
nationals, which has been a wonderful thing, but our arrangements mean the U.K.
exchequer more or less loses out on the deal,” Johnson said. “Erasmus was also
extremely expensive.”
The lack of
a deal to participate in Erasmus+ is particularly irritating for British
students because five non-EU countries do take part in the scheme, including
Turkey, North Macedonia and Switzerland. However, in previous years, the U.K.
received almost twice as many students as it sent away.
"Ending
UK participation in Erasmus - an
initiative that has expanded opportunities and horizons for so many young
people - is cultural vandalism by the UK government," Scottish First
Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Twitter.
Matt
Crilly, president of the National Union of Students of Scotland, said failure
to reach a deal on Erasmus+ was “disappointing.”
“The
Erasmus funding grants help open up international study opportunities for folk
who may otherwise not be able to afford it,” he said.
Expectations
for a deal on Erasmus+ remained low throughout the year, after the U.K. sought
ways to limit the cost of its association and pressed ahead with plans for a
domestic scheme in case talks broke down.
“While the
announcement that the U.K. will now not be participating in Erasmus+ is
disappointing, we are pleased that the prime minister has committed to a new
U.K. program to fund global mobility,” said Vivienne Stern, director of the
international arm of the vice chancellors group Universities UK. “We now ask
the U.K. government to quickly provide clarity on this Erasmus+ domestic
alternative, and that it be ambitious and fully funded.”
The EU had
offered Britain access to the entire program for seven years, in exchange for a
fee which would be calculated on the basis of GDP. The U.K., however, preferred
more time-limited participation, and was only interested in the mobility
element of the scheme, by far the biggest part — the scheme also funds other
higher-education activities such as exchange of best practices by university
managers. This would have allowed Britain to save taxpayers’ money but there
was no precedent of partial association to Erasmus+.
U.K.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed funding for an alternative to Erasmus+ in the
one-year spending review in November. Under the British student-mobility
program, the U.K. government would fund British students to go abroad but would
not be expected to support EU students taking up courses in British
universities.
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