By Oliver Hall
THERE is no sense in rehashing in great detail the voting patterns of the young and old in the 2016 Brexit referendum – more articles than could possibly be necessary have been written about that.
The statistics speak for themselves – 60% of people aged over 60 voted to leave, while 73% of 18 to 24-year-olds voted to remain.
Perhaps less reported, though, is just how disproportionate the impact of that decision has been.
There is no doubt that Brexit itself was a flawed plan in the eyes of many, especially the young, but not necessarily one that had to have the catastrophic impact on students and young people that it has.
Perhaps most problematic has been the end of the freedom of movement and the Erasmus+ scheme, enjoyed by Britons since 1983 and expanded even further in 2014.
The scheme enabled students to move between places of higher education in Europe and beyond at no cost.
The Turing Scheme, the British replacement following Brexit that the government hailed as an improvement thanks to the global opportunities that it offers, has proved complex, insufficient, and chaotic for universities and students alike.
First, it is worth outlining the key differences between the Turing and Erasmus+ schemes. As of 2014, the EU scheme encapsulated all education, training, youth and sport programmes covering both tuition fees and some living costs on a reciprocal basis. The result has been thousands of university courses across the country that offer “years abroad”, generally in the third year of a four-year course, in which the student is expected to spend a set amount of time out of the country either working or studying. I am enrolled in one of these courses myself.
In Jersey, the closest part of British Isles to France and Europe, the shift away from the Erasmus+ scheme has been more dramatic than anywhere else.
Not only is it geographically and culturally aligned with Europe, but Jersey also sends more pupils into higher education than the UK.
Here, 45% of school leavers went onto higher education in 2022 compared to 35.8% in the UK in 2023. Here, too, more students than ever are choosing to study foreign languages such as Portuguese. In the UK, languages and humanities as a whole are on a steady decline.
In the past, of course, Jersey lawyers were compelled to spend some time studying in Caen, a requirement that still exists for those in Guernsey, where aspiring members of the bar must spend three months studying. As late as 2018, Jersey has attempted to maintain strong relationships with the university there via individual agreements and benefits.
Despite the promise of “global opportunities”, something that Erasmus admittedly didn’t offer, the Turing scheme has been a sorry excuse for a replacement.
Most obviously, the fact that it doesn’t cover tuition fees has completely changed the landscape. Host universities are expected to simply waive these costs but the vast majority don’t and individual universities are left to establish their own reciprocal arrangements with partner institutions.
Evidently, this puts smaller and less well-established universities at a huge disadvantage and even the largest are able to offer only a fraction of the opportunities they did in the past. The paperwork and processes of setting up these agreements simply takes too much time.
Even the University of Oxford, perhaps the most well-established of all higher education institutions in the country, offered only 11 funded places for Spanish students in the academic year 2023/24.
The government points to the Turing Scheme’s support of disadvantaged students as one of its primary advantages and indeed, it offers top-ups to the stipend that others receive on a needs and destination-assessed basis. Depending on whether your country is categorised as high or medium cost, students from disadvantaged backgrounds can receive as much as £490 a month if their stay lasts more than eight weeks. In reality though, that funding is allocated to fewer institutions on a much less reliable basis.
The Erasmus+ scheme reviews its funding every six or seven years, meaning that universities are able to plan ahead significantly and advertise accurately to prospective applicants.
In stark contrast, the Turing Scheme reviews its funding each and every year, with its first two years showing huge variation (the University of Warwick saw funding fall by 30% in 2023). Even worse, universities discover the total funding that they will receive in July at the earliest and often not until August, leaving students in the lurch and unsure as to whether they will even be able to complete their travels and studies.
Furthermore, students wanting to spend any more than 90 days inside the EU now have to apply for visas. Not only is this a costly process that requires paperwork and often certain proof of income and/or funding (clearly disadvantaging students from lower economic backgrounds) but it also forces long-term planning, usually starting six months in advance.
Despite this, students beginning their studies in September won’t know how their university has chosen to allocate its funding until August at the very earliest. Again, well-established institutions such as Oxford University are able to offer guarantees and cover the costs if their funding varies: others are left with reduced funds or nothing at all.
Despite the fact that now the entire world is “open” to students as opposed to the ‘confines’ of Europe, the Turing Scheme still paid out only £106 million in 22/23. That is £22 million less than during our last year as members of the Erasmus+ scheme in 2020.
Combined with the ending of free healthcare and the difficulty in obtaining any kind of work visa, students and young people are simply discouraged from undertaking long-term study periods or work placements. Instead, there has been a substantial rise in those finding short-term solutions, sometimes lasting only two weeks. The depressing thing of course is that it didn’t have to be like this. During negotiations, the European Union invited the UK to become an associated third-party member of the Erasmus+ programme alongside Turkey, Iceland, and others. The UK declined and will now have to wait until 2027 to get another opportunity.
The impact of a hard Brexit, of course, goes far beyond university students and the shortcomings of the Turing Programme. Those travelling and looking for work before, after, or instead of university study are hugely limited.
Personally, leaving school in the last year of the transition period, I received several internship and job offers from across Spain, even during the Covid-tainted summer of 2020. Now, with vastly more experience in an array of industries and in the third year of a degree at the University of Oxford, I have not succeeded in securing any of the 56 jobs that I have applied for to date.
As much as some bemoaned the influx of young people from across the continent and the diversity that they provided across several industries, especially hospitality, before Brexit, the same is now true in reverse. It is simply not possible to obtain a right to work in the vast majority of EU countries without a job offer and the vast majority of companies won’t even process an internship or job application without the right to work. Try squaring that circle.
All that said, I did manage to make it away to Barcelona for my year abroad, studying a master’s course in hospitality management – albeit entirely self-funded. I managed to make that small part of this year work, but my biggest concern is not just for the rest of my 12 months and my life, but for those who aren’t able to pay their own way onto such courses.
Slowly but surely, the UK government’s “long-term decision making” is putting language learning and the most valuable of cultural experiences behind a paywall. That future isn’t feeling so bright.
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Oliver Hall is a Spanish student at the University of Oxford, where he was the editor of Cherwell newspaper. He is currently on a work placement at the JEP.
