British universities are urging the government to find a way to restart the flow of EU students to Britain after Brexit, including a possible return to the Erasmus student exchange programme.
But as Keir Starmer prepares for his first bilateral meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Wednesday, British universities say they are determined not to provoke a return to the “toxic” Brexit row over migration and are adopting a “watch and wait” approach.
“We really, really regret the fact that we have lost a flow of really good European students into the UK,” said the chief executive of Universities UK, Vivienne Stern. But she said she recognised the “toxic” domestic politics surrounding the prospect of EU citizens returns at scale to education in the UK.
“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 government to be clamping down on immigration in other ways,” she said.
Speaking in New York on Friday, Starmer seemed to have softened his resistance to the idea of a youth mobility scheme allowing under-30s to return to the EU for working holiday stints. He said there were “no plans for a youth mobility scheme”, but described the meeting on Wednesday as “important”.
EU sources say the meeting is designed to seal a political direction to allow a work programme for various subjects including defence and security and a possible veterinary agreement to be scoped out as part of a wider “reset” in relations between the EU and the UK.
The idea is that both sides would work together for the next six months, teasing out the short-term and longer-term negotiation pathways with an EU-UK summit in the spring next year.
Up to now, most of the focus on reviving post-Brexit opportunities for young people has been focused on an EU proposal in April for a youth mobility scheme that would allow under-30s to study or work abroad for a limited number of years.
But little has been said politically about the Erasmus student exchange programme, through which about 15,000 British students a year studied in a EU university before Brexit.
The UK tried to negotiate a deal to stay as an associate member of Erasmus, but the financial burden rested disproportionately with the UK, and universities would have had to shoulder the cost of more incoming students.
EU data for 2020 shows that 17,795 students came to the UK in 2018/2019, almost double the number of British students, 9,908, that went to the EU. The previous year, 18,839 EU citizens came to British universities compared with 9,540 going to the EU.
However, Stern says one option would be to revisit the “correction mechanism” that was built into the hard-fought deal for associate membership of the EU’s Horizon science programme.
After months of brinkmanship in 2019, Lord Frost finally got a deal that allowed the UK to claw back money it if paid more into Horizon than it got out.
Universities UK also believes there are elements of Turing, the British replacement mobility scheme, that offer fresh ideas on student exchanges for future negotiations.
While Erasmus allows study from two months to a maximum of 12 months, Turing, which is expected to be taken up by 23,000 students this year, facilitates four-week placements. Along with Eramus, it also allows summer schooling and vocational rather than academic experiences, which would increase the take-up among disadvantaged communities.
Stern says they are “holding back” on any asks of the government on Erasmus and have not “pinned our colours to the mast” so that they can see how the debate unfolds.
She said it was “absolutely fantastic” that youth and students were “central” to the discussion about the reset in relations with the EU.
But, she added, 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.”
