Yay - UK has agreed a deal with the EU to rejoin Erasmus+

Good news.

Now let’s turn our attention to closer working. We will be fit economically and in security.

Mind you Putin will pull out all of the stops to prevent, is as will Trump.

Excellent news, my DSs didn’t take part, but several of their friends did and certainly benefited from the scheme.

It is great news. I am so pleased young people in the UK will be able to be part of the life experiences that Erasmus can bring again.

Our granddaughter was due to spend a year abroad as part of her university course. Then COVID struck. It was such a shame.

Can someone please explain to me how Erasmus works and what the benefits will be to the UK as a whole? Before someone jumps down my throat, I've never been to university and am curious about the scheme and the benefits it will bring.

'What is the Erasmus scheme?

"The Erasmus scheme enables students to study, train or volunteer in other European countries for up to a year, without paying any extra fees.

It is also open to those in vocational training, apprentices or people who are retraining through a college or school.
Students usually pay fees to their home institutions, with additional costs covered by the European Union, funded by taxpayers' money.

Almost 1.5 million people and 85,600 organisations took part in the Erasmus scheme in 2024"

It also funds collaboration at a higher level, for example DS was collaborating with bio-chemists as one of the mathematicians developing new drugs. It has the potential to therefore to bring us into European Research and Development groups, with spin offs in the longer term into industry.

*It's the informal connections as much as the formal ones that matter. the power of young students connecting with each other means lifelong friendships and collaboration in number of fields.

(It means that students who don't have well off parents have opportunities they would otherwise not have had)

Nice to have some good news.
Mind and experience -broadening opportunities for young people.
What's not to like.
😊👏

That's good news. Our brightest university students need that opportunity which the Buffoon thought was not value for money. Re-establishing better links with our most important and reliable trading partner is essential. Of course if Reform get in all that will go down the drain given their fantasyland economics.

It's a yay from me too!
A welcome return to the Erasmus scheme which offers so many opportunities.

However, I don't think we can be totally optimistic for the long-term until the Farage/Bardella partnership, which has other ideas, gets crushed. There might be something waiting in the wings to scupper it, but I hope not.

Not quite with you, but genuinely interested, can you explain more?

Hooray we need to get back to working with Europe biggest mistake ever that blxxdy referendum
🥳

AI Overview
One prominent Brexit-supporting MP, Suella Braverman, has been publicly identified as a personal beneficiary of the Erasmus scheme.
Suella Braverman, a staunch Eurosceptic who served as the chair of the European Research Group (ERG) from 2017 to 2018, participated in the Erasmus program as a student. She studied for a Master's in European and Comparative Law at Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris, which was facilitated by the scheme, after completing her undergraduate degree at Queens' College, Cambridge.
Despite her personal experience with the program's benefits, Braverman consistently voted for Brexit and supported the UK government's decision to withdraw from the Erasmus+ scheme after the UK's departure from the EU, a decision that led to the program being replaced by the domestic Turing Scheme. The government at the time, under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, stated the program was too expensive and the UK "loses out" financially due to more EU students coming to the UK than British students going to Europe.
The Erasmus student programme is about to become another ...
17 Dec 2020 — Nevertheless, every financial commitment has opportunity cost” William D Taylor says: December 18, 2020 at 9:38 pm. I h...

The London School of Economics and Political Science

UK students lose Erasmus membership in Brexit deal
23 Dec 2020 — The omission of Erasmus from the UK-EU deal ends a scheme that had offered student exchanges as well as school links.

Fantastic, I have a DGD who wants to do MFL at uni who will be able to participate. I also have an Italian nephew who is studying chemistry and can study abroad as part of his course, he has good English and didn’t think he’d be able to study at a U.K. university due to the cost. He was considering the Netherlands, hopefully he may now be able to opt for the U.K.

Homestead62

Can someone please explain to me how Erasmus works and what the benefits will be to the UK as a whole? Before someone jumps down my throat, I've never been to university and am curious about the scheme and the benefits it will bring.

Scientific and medical research is a planet-wide coordinated effort now. Our universities and our bright students benefit from learning to work with academics in other countries and are able to pursue career opportunities that might not otherwise have been available.
Sadly, numbers of our universities lost funding and places on international projects because of Brexit.
Schemes like Erasmus also broaden minds and stop us thinking in small-island ways, we have a lot to learn from others. Learning another language is a life long benefit.
I wouldn't trust AI without stopping and doing my own research, the report above seems strangely biased to me.

Erasmus has many benefits, nice to have but at the price tag of 10% of the total university budget seems very excessive.
The overall money it's going to cost would be better spent on general funding for universities and education. That money should benefit all equally, rather than a small minority.

I believe we need "Excellence" Visgir1 for the well being of our R and D in industries and in such matters as the development of drugs and other new technology. We do need "Best and Brightest" for our country's sake.

Without this we are likely to be, in terms of our future, seriously disadvantaged while other countries co-operate for the best of all.

I'm delighted it is coming back. In my subject, we hosted more visitors than we had students going out, as too few Brits can speak another language, but it was a great opportunity to meet and mix with people from other areas and learn about the similarities and differences between the countries. Students made friends they'd never have met, too - I think that is a good thing for the future.

Incidentally, the scheme is open to all students, not just the best and brightest, which is another reason I liked it. The 'best and brightest' already have that advantage, and will get other rewards for being gifted - it's great when more 'average' students get opportunities too, IMO.

Wyllow3

Not quite with you, but genuinely interested, can you explain more?

I think it was last month that Bardella asked the EU parliament to reconsider the expansion of the Erasmus programme given the out of control migration situation. Basically he has a bee in his bonnet about the financial cost to the country.
Seeing as he is now best buddies with Farage, after meeting with him in London last week. I hope they have no intention of undermining things.
The Erasmus scheme restructuring comes in in 2027, just as Macron has to leave office in the spring and an election is to be held.

Thank you for the explanation of the Erasmus Scheme.

My son benefited from this when he was at university, so I am in favour. However, I don't understand why it costs so much. What exactly are we paying for?

Admin, organisation, mapping of learning outcomes from visitor to host degree, marking, teaching, university facilities such as libraries and labs, accommodation, heating, security, cleaners - the list goes on. Some things are less clear cut, such as costs of buying new buildings, huge salaries for senior managers etc, but much of the fees goes on day to day expenses.

People so often assume that these things are free, and count the number of taught hours and divide that into the fees. It’s much more complex than that.

Many Erasmus students are building up those important international networks so important to international standard research. Notice when new breakthroughs are made in medecine and other sciencest how international the teams duing the research are and how spread across several research centres in several countires.