Following the recent Brexit deal, after failing to reach an agreement with the EU, Britain has decided to pull out of the Europe-wide Erasmus student exchange programme, in which British students have been participating in for over 35 years.
UK students have been benefitting from #Erasmus pan-EU education exchange for 35 years. 200,000 people are now taking part. They'll suddenly lose access in 6 days.@BorisJohnson insisted that UK students wouldn't lose this education after #Brexit. Now he says it's too expensive. https://t.co/VDPtb5Aypk
— Dave Keating (@DaveKeating) December 25, 2020
Consequently, this will also affect Maltese students as the UK was a popular choice among students since there were no language barrier issues. So, as of next year, the UK will no longer be available as an option for the Europe-wide exchange programme.
As a compensation, Boris Johnson said that that UK will be establishing its own scheme with ‘the best universities in the world’ and it will be named after the British computing pioneer, Alan Turing.
However, this new scheme is not expected to fund students going to the UK, such as Maltese students, as Erasmus normally does.
As for the UK, this omission deal ends a scheme that had offered student exchanges, school links, work experience, and even apprenticeships across Europe since 1987.
Adam Tickell, who is the vice-chancellor of one of the participating universities – the University of Sussex – commented, “Leaving Erasmus is a real sadness, a scheme whose original foundations were laid at Sussex. Over the years the Erasmus programme transformed the lives of thousands of young people.”
