20
Examination of witnesses
Emma Meredith and Vivienne Stern.
Q1 The Chair: Good morning and welcome to this session of the House of Lords Select Committee on European Affairs, in which we are looking into the issue of Erasmus+ and the prospects for the future, and how that relates to the Turing Scheme, which has been running up to now. We are delighted to have as our witnesses this morning Ms Vivienne Stern, who is the CEO of Universities UK, and also Ms Emma Meredith, who is director of skills, policy and global engagement at the Association of Colleges. We are very grateful to you for sparing us the time this morning. We much look forward to what you have to say.
This is a public session, which is being broadcast. A transcript will be taken and you will be provided with a draft to check for any errors and omissions that you might find. We are aiming to get it done within 60 minutes if we can, not least because you will probably have had enough of the temperature in here by then.
If you are content, we will get under way with the first question, which is a rather general one just to set the scene about Erasmus+. How has it changed since the UK last participated in the programme? Crucially, how does it compare with the Turing Scheme? Who would like to start?
Emma Meredith: Thank you very much for the invitation to the Association of Colleges to participate this morning. We are the national membership body for colleges of further and higher education in England. There are 213 colleges delivering education and training to 1.6 million learners in England, and we were really pleased that the UK decided to reassociate to Erasmus+. Its student mobility is really the mainstay of college international activity.
It is important to see Erasmus and Turing as two very different schemes. They are united by the common principle of outbound mobility, but they are quite different. In terms of how Erasmus has changed since the UK last participated, it now includes digital mobility, which when we were last in the scheme it did not. There are more non-EU members of the scheme as well, so a broader pool of countries for us to partner with. Also, in terms of our participation since we were last in it, there is probably now a lack of institutional memory among colleges, universities and other providers about what it means to be involved in Erasmus: the programme, its management, its audit, et cetera. There is quite a lot of work to do to readdress that and to promote the scheme.
Turing very much was a one-way scheme. It was for UK students outbound. It was not reciprocal like Erasmus. It did not have staff mobility either, which Erasmus includes, and it did not have the partnership element as well that key action 2 in Erasmus provides. I will stop there, but there are quite a few differences that I am sure Vivienne will elaborate on.
Vivienne Stern: To add to that, they are quite different things. Erasmus is a platform for strategic co-operation between university systems in a way that Turing is not. I should say, though, that we were very grateful to the Government at the time for introducing the Turing Scheme, which at least allowed the university, college and schools systems across the UK—Wales had a different scheme called Taith—to continue to send students abroad. But because it did not have that reciprocal element, it was very much more limited. It had some advantages in the way that it supported shorter-term mobilities, and we might return to that in the design of Erasmus+. But it is much more modest in scope, in essence.
The key point that I would like to make is that Erasmus should not just be seen as a programme which supports reciprocal mobility. It does that, but it does much more than that. Over time, Erasmus has evolved to become something of much broader geostrategic relevance. If you think about the presence of university alliances within key action 2, the emphasis on staff mobility and the emphasis on seeding co-operation in research and innovation, Erasmus is a much bigger idea and has grown over time to leverage the advantages of universities as platforms for very large-scale collaboration. The budget has obviously also grown and, as Emma has said, there is a stronger focus on a wider variety of forms of co-operation, including, in the mobility space, digital mobility, and—from our point of view, very importantly—also a stronger focus on inclusion. In the past, one of the criticisms of Erasmus, particularly in the UK, was that it tended to be the most affluent students who participated, and there have been some measures to try to increase the diversity of participation in the programme.
The Chair: Would you agree that we have lost quite a bit of corporate memory?
Vivienne Stern: Yes.
The Chair: Okay. Thank you very much indeed. Let us move on to the Duke of Wellington.
Q2 The Duke of Wellington: I should declare that I am a former chairman of King’s College London, and I am a governor of an independent school. We are moving from Turing back to Erasmus. Do you think with hindsight that the Turing Scheme actually did achieve its objectives, and what are the advantages or characteristics of Turing that you think we will have lost because we have moved on?
Vivienne Stern: There are two conspicuous advantages of the design of Turing over Erasmus when it comes to student mobility. One is the emphasis on short-term mobility, very short periods of mobility which are non-credit bearing. That has been integral to the second point, which is that it has succeeded in its objective of attracting strong participation from students who typically have not historically taken part in outward mobility. There is a connection between the two, because we know that for students from the least advantaged backgrounds—students with caring responsibilities or with disabilities; longer-term mobility is difficult if you are holding down a job, if you have got responsibilities at home to look after relatives, if there are reasons why your family might not be very keen on you spending a long time out of the UK—a short period of mobility is a powerful tool. Some 55% of participation in the last cohort of Turing (2024/25) was from students from the least advantaged groups. There have been advantages, but the scale is very modest and it does not support reciprocal mobility.
The final thing I will mention is that Turing was born global. That was intentional. It was designed to support mobility to any country in the world. When you look at the top destinations for mobile students, France and Spain have always been very high up, but the next one after that is the US, and I think Australia is at number five. That comes in and out. We are not very good at languages, as many of you will know, so mobility to anglophone destinations has always been popular, and Turing supported that.
Erasmus allows for international mobility, but there is a limit on the budget that can be spent on that mobility to destinations that are not within the pool of associated members.
The Duke of Wellington: Somebody mentioned earlier that there are non-EU countries that are part of Erasmus. Can you tell us which countries?
Emma Meredith: Countries such as Turkey and North Macedonia—countries around the European Union—have associated with the programme we are going in. I understand Switzerland are looking to associate as well. There is another third-country category set out in different zones in the world where there are options for mobility as well.
Vivienne is right that Turing was truly international in that sense. Our members and UK colleges in the further education sector have visited about 38 different countries through Turing. That international element was really taken up.
I completely echo the point about the anglophone factor. That is something that we will need to look at through Erasmus, which has money for language preparation. That is one of the advantages of Erasmus.
Q3 Lord Tugendhat: My first question is: how were the education, youth and sports sectors stakeholders consulted before the decisions to reassociate with Erasmus and the Turing scheme? Secondly, what are your sector’s views on the replacement of the Turing Scheme with Erasmus+? Was that consulted on? Thirdly, in the light of what you have been saying, I am struck by the complementarity of the two. Do you think it would be possible to maintain Turing while rejoining Erasmus, or to keep some of its benefits? That is three questions in one, I am afraid.
Emma Meredith: We published a policy paper in 2024 that quite cheekily asked to stay in Erasmus and maintain Turing for the rest of world. But there are always going to be budgetary constraints. The important thing is that we have a mobility scheme that offers these opportunities to young people and adults.
Consultation is an interesting word. The decision to reassociate sits with the Government as part of our reset of relations with the EU. The role of a sector organisation such as ours was to offer information. At any point, we have been part of stakeholder groups that the Department for Education set up both for Turing and Erasmus. There are stakeholder groups for higher education, adults and further education, which we are part of. Through those groups, we are able to provide input about what needs to happen next with Erasmus.
Vivienne Stern: Starting with the question about consultation, we have been bolted to the team in the DfE that has been involved in these negotiations throughout the Brexit negotiation process and the process of designing the Turing Scheme. We have tried to stay as close as possible to what is happening in the negotiations in the last couple of years. But there is a certain level of politics where sometimes—perhaps it is rude to say this—I am not sure that even the DfE knows what is happening at the highest possible level.
We wanted to remain part of the Erasmus programme and pushed very hard for that in the period after 2016. But the decision by the then Government to create Turing was a very welcome move. If wishes were horses and money grew on trees, we would like both. But we are in a very different environment in 2026 from where we were in 2016. You will know from following wider debates about research, innovation and higher education that university budgets are being squeezed on many fronts. Just yesterday, we had another £50 million cut to teaching grants in England. It is pretty obvious that the Government have other pressures on finances. So, although under ideal circumstances we would like Turing to continue, our focus will be on maximising the value of participation in Erasmus from this point on.
Lord Tugendhat: So, basically, you are saying that if we have Erasmus, we cannot have Turing?
Vivienne Stern: My guess is that that is the reality for now.
Lord Tugendhat: But if money did grow on trees, what you would like to have?
Vivienne Stern: There is an opportunity with the design of the next programme. It is very important that, if the UK is going to start participating in Erasmus again, it needs to be a long-term commitment. We will not get our money back in the short term because, as you have already said, there is institutional capability, capacity and habit from participating in this programme that will need to reboot. It will take us some time to get participation rates up, as it has with Horizon. It should be a long-term commitment and we should seek to influence the design of the next programme with reference to the things that were good about Turing: short-term mobility, non-credit bearing, and a bigger envelope for international credit mobility.
Lord Tugendhat: Thank you, that is what I wanted to bring out.
The Chair: Baroness Smith has a declaration and a follow-up.
Q4 Baroness Smith of Newnham: Correct. My declaration is that I am a professor at Cambridge University and have non-executive roles at BIMM University and the OIG. I have a serious interest in higher education and also in mobility. You just said that in the short term we will not get our money back. Is the value of Erasmus, but also Turing, beyond the financial? Is it not a question not just about what we pay in but about interactions, engagement and soft power in ways that you cannot monetise?
Vivienne Stern: I strongly agree with that. It was one of the arguments we made in 2016. If you look at this on a money in, money out basis, you are missing the point. If you think about the development of the individual student and graduate, we know that students who participate in mobility do better academically. You can see a clear correlation with outward mobility and the acquisition of first-class honours. They do better in the labour market. These experiences build all sorts of capabilities that employers value, particularly resilience. I am an employer. I know that what matters to me is the ability for employees, particularly new ones, to withstand a little bit of pressure, adapt and turn their hand to new things. Those are the sorts of qualities and capabilities that outward mobility is fantastically well designed to promote.
We used to collect the case studies of students who had been abroad, and when you sit them one alongside the other, you can see that there is a common thread. I used to call this the “crying in the supermarket” element. Paragraph 1 would say, “This experience changed my life”. Paragraph 2 would tell the story of day 3, when they arrived at a place, knew nothing and had no friends, and they were in a supermarket and could not make head nor tail of things. Anybody who has been immersed in a place, particularly where you do not speak the language, as I have, has a version of the “crying in the supermarket” story. But the last paragraph talks about having come through that and looking back at the human being you became. You cannot put a monetary value on that.
But it is also not about the individual. This is where it is important that this committee tries to raise the profile of this beyond the university community. We are in a dangerous world and stitching together our populations at various levels and leveraging our collective strength with like-minded countries on our own continent, in research and innovation but also defence, culture and all sorts of other areas, has become more important, and pressing. That is not something you can reduce to money in, money out.
Q5 Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My declaration is that I am a former chancellor of Warwick University, as you know. It is very nice of you both to be here, thank you. You talked about how, ideally, we would stitch these two programmes together, and I was conscious that one of the things you mentioned before about Erasmus that was different to Turing was the opportunities for staff as well. That leads on to my broader question, but I am interested to see whether this plays into it. It is about the strength of appetite within the sectors to participate in Erasmus+ in 2027. What levels of inbound and outbound mobility might you expect, bearing in mind what you said about the corporate memory that has been lost and the need to rebuild in the minds of the institutions, never mind the minds of the staff and the students?
Emma Meredith: The feedback from our sector about the benefits of reassociation is very positive. We surveyed our members and 81% were positive. The other responses were mostly “don’t know”, because of this institutional memory and the fact that not all colleges participated previously in Erasmus.
On the levels of mobility, our European partners are very positive. We have to work with the British Council to promote the scheme in order to get value for money from this first year of reassociation and make sure that all parts of the education sector, as well as sport and youth, are aware of the opportunities with Erasmus. We have 1 million young people who are not in education, employment or training. How can we encourage opportunities for them through Erasmus?
This goes back to what Vivienne said about the principles of the scheme. It is not simply a study or work placement opportunity; it speaks to much bigger issues around cultural understanding and community cohesion. It all comes down to how well we can promote the scheme and embed it across the education sector.
Vivienne Stern: Historically, there was an imbalance between those who went out and incoming students, although, because the mobility lengths can vary, we always thought that the numerical imbalance was overstating the case and that, actually, if you took the two European students who came in for short periods versus the one UK student who went for a longer period, it all came out in the wash.
But as a country, we have a problem. The mobility rate for undergraduate students in the peak year was something like 8.8% (2018-19), compared to about 50% of German students. We thought, and still believe, that that is a mistake and that the UK should try to build generational momentum behind the idea that some international experience should be part of an advanced education. It does not have to be long or in a country where you do not speak the language, although acquiring language skills is an underrated competence. But it is going to take time, and it takes deliberate effort. One of the things I find most frustrating is that we ran a campaign called Gone International from about 2015 to 2018 to try to boost outbound mobility. We tried to demonstrate, using data, why you might do this, and we had great success. I will ask my brilliant colleague Iona to send the committee the graph that shows that, over the period that we ran that campaign, we saw a really significant increase in the proportion of students who participated in outbound mobility and an increasing proportion of students from the groups least likely to participate. In the peak year (2018/19), we had something like 50,000 total outbound mobilities, which is still small but the momentum was starting to build.
We can achieve that again, but it will take us all talking this up and a long-term commitment to the Erasmus programme, which I do not think we have a clear sight of. It will take a consensus that this is something that matters not just to an individual student or university but might matter to the whole country.
Emma Meredith: There are other countries in Erasmus at the moment that receive more inbound mobilities than they send, including countries such as Germany. I would be pleased to follow up with the data if that would be interesting as a comparison.
Q6 Lord Jackson of Peterborough: Were there any particular implications to the UK previously having more inbound and outbound mobility under Erasmus+? The figures are quite stark. The outbound mobility under Erasmus+ in 2019 was 40,000—much lower than France, which had 104,000; Germany, which had 101,000; and Spain, which had 95,000. The UK’s inbound mobility—66,000—was higher than France’s 63,000 but lower than Germany’s 82,000 and Spain’s 130,000. My colleagues will ask you later about the financial implications, but what is your view of this disparity in policy terms?
Vivienne Stern: We did quite a lot of research to try to understand why UK students were unwilling to go abroad. Language skills always came very high up the list, as did concerns around affordability. We have a system that is funded in a different way from other European systems, and I think that has an influence. But the thing that bothered me most was fear—the idea that there was a discomfort that was often expressed by students when you asked them what it was that would put them off going to another country. They would say that they were not sure how they would cope with being in an unfamiliar environment.
When you look at countries with very high mobility rates, they have done better on building language competence and perhaps have student populations who can see the advantages and are less fearful of crossing a border. Maybe that has something to do with the geographic proximity. If you are in Germany, you share a border with lots of other European countries. But it is also mindset. We have an island mentality, and we should try to chip away at that. In a sense, it does not matter whether a student studies in France or in Japan; the important thing is to get an understanding that other people do things differently and it is possible to see your own system in a new light by having spent some time somewhere else.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough: Is it not also a function of the fact that we are, I think, number two in soft power, that English is a universal global language, that we are in a time zone that gives rise to advantages in financial services, and that until quite recently, and from time to time, we had a dynamic economy and plenty of jobs? That is the reason people want to come to the UK and UK students do not want to go to Spain, Italy, Portugal, France.
Vivienne Stern: I think people want to come to the UK because, by a variety of measures, we have one of the best university systems in the world. It is extraordinary in the current negotiations that the Commission and member states have prioritised access to our education system to the degree that they have. It tells you something that, at the top political level, the desire to open our university system to more European students is a high political priority. It is something we should take as a compliment, although you are absolutely right to mention the English language advantage.
Emma Meredith: Education is a vehicle for diplomacy and soft power. That is very apparent in our 2026 international education strategy.
On the inbound versus outbound balance, I will speak to what Vivienne said about encouraging more people to go outward. For those who cannot travel, there is an advantage to people coming inward, because they still have the opportunity to interact with people from other countries and cultures. I do not think it should be seen as an entirely negative scenario that the inbound and outbound numbers do not match. Certainly, for our members under Erasmus, that was not something that they articulated as a concern. There is work involved in organising inbound placements, but it was not a huge concern for our members.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough: A final one, if I may: am I inferring correctly from your comments, Ms Stern, that you feel—I am asking you to go out on a limb, perhaps—that the Commission should be looking at other non-monetisable areas, bearing in mind that the European Union does not have any universities in the top 10 for teaching and research, as I understand it? We have got three or four in the UK. The others are in the United States and other areas of the world. You are saying they should be concentrating on other areas that are cultural, not just saying, “Oh, let’s get our students into British universities”?
Vivienne Stern: All I am observing is that something is quite remarkable when you think about the reset that is being negotiated between the UK and the EU. One of the things that the member states have consistently wanted is to ensure that European students have opportunities to study in larger numbers in the UK. There are two distinct issues. There is Erasmus—so periods of mobility here—but there is also full-degree study and the pressure from the Commission and member states on fee status, which I imagine we might come back to.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough: We will be coming on to that.
Vivienne Stern: I am only observing that it is remarkable, is it not, that it should be regarded as a priority at the highest political level? It is something that we should take note of, because it is a reminder that we have got a huge asset in our university system.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough: You are blowing your own trumpet, and that is fine.
Vivienne Stern: I am actually paid to do that.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough: We understand that.
The Chair: It does raise the question, of course, which I will not ask you to address: if there is such a strong card in our hand, are we playing it wisely enough in terms of wider negotiations? Anyway, I call Lord Brennan.
Q7 Lord Brennan of Canton: Thank you, Chair. Just on those figures that Lord Jackson was reading out, which were to do with the UK, Germany, France and Spain under Erasmus, Spain, like the UK, according to those figures, actually had far fewer students going out than coming in. I understood your explanation of why that is an issue with the UK. Do you have any idea why Spain would be in that same position but Germany and France were not?
Vivienne Stern: I do not know. In Germany, there is a very well organised infrastructure to support mobility. It is prioritised in a way that not all member states do. The role of the national agency is important, alongside the role of the school system and the development of language competencies. I have no explanation of why Spain should be more like us than like Germany.
Emma Meredith: Perhaps it is something we can offer to follow up if that would be helpful.
Vivienne Stern: Yes.
Lord Brennan of Canton: Okay. Thank you. I wanted to ask you how you think Erasmus+ is going to impact on the organisations that participate in it, the people who participate in it and the UK more generally. You may have touched on some of these things already. There is this issue of £390 million of the budget being under indirect management, I think by the British Council—that is what it is going to be, is it not?—and the European Commission. How much of that figure do you expect to be disbursed?
Vivienne Stern: I do not think we can make a guess at this stage. It will also depend on participation across sectors. You have colleges and universities here, but of course Erasmus will support other forms of mobility from other sorts of organisation. It will take us some time to build up momentum, though; we should expect that. We have seen this in Horizon. We have been participating as an associated country in Horizon Europe now for a couple of years, after a period of having been out. We lost momentum during the period where we were not associated. We are building it back. We are now achieving very strong success rates in pillar 1, but pillar 2 is taking some time. That is what we would expect to see again—that it will take time to build momentum.
Lord Brennan of Canton: Does that mean that, in the early years of re-entry into Erasmus+, organisations will be worse off in comparison to how they were under Turing in the first years?
Vivienne Stern: I would not expect that.
Emma Meredith: Worse off in what sense? Financially?
Lord Brennan of Canton: Yes, financially, and in participation as well.
Emma Meredith: I agree that it is going to take some time to build momentum back up. We have really got to take this first year of reassociation, and—this leads into some of the other questions—think about how that might be monitored, measured and evaluated. I probably cannot emphasise strongly enough the point we have mentioned about institutional memory and awareness. There is a lot of work to do to promote the scheme and to make sure that the funding for it is maximised. As Vivienne said, that does involve reaching out into the sports sector and as you said schools, to make sure that the participation is excellent, but also to combat some legacy perceptions that Erasmus is an elite mobility scheme. It really is not. It is there for lots and lots of different categories.
Lord Brennan of Canton: On that point, given the catastrophic decline in the study of languages in the last 15 years or so—I will not go into the reasons for that—is it not almost inevitable that you are really pushing against the tide in trying to widen participation, because of the lack of language skills among the target group that you would like to participate?
Emma Meredith: Vivienne highlighted—it is very similar for the college sector—that France and Spain remain strong destinations in Turing. We have got to maximise the opportunities through Erasmus. Yes, I am a language graduate so I agree with you about the decline in languages, but there is the money to pay for language preparation, and we have got to make sure that people know that. You can actually learn, so that you do not have the crisis in the supermarket: you can perhaps read some of the labels. We did not have that so much with Turing, so, again, it is a repositioning of the benefits of Erasmus participation.
Vivienne Stern: I would also add two things. First, we have to work to maximise our participation in this programme. The budget will be bigger than Turing so, if you think about it from the opportunity point of view, the opportunity is bigger than the Turing opportunity. We could achieve a greater number of mobilities if we put our minds to it. We as an organisation—Universities UK—have been working to build momentum prior to the opening of the scheme in the UK. We have been doing things to help those people who have never applied before to understand how it works and to learn from peers who have got previous experience. Working in partnership with government, with colleges, with schools, with sporting organisations, it is in the hands of the sector to try to build back this participation rate.
On the increase in opportunities, under the new programme you can participate in shorter-term mobilities, although there are some disadvantages compared with Turing relating to the requirement that these should be credit bearing. But many other European systems are also now offering teaching in English.
Lord Brennan of Canton: I was going to ask about that.
Vivienne Stern: The landscape is changing for two reasons: shorter-term mobilities, and more teaching in English.
Lord Brennan of Canton: That answers that question. Just finally, on a factual point, you mentioned the Taith scheme earlier on. Is that also going to come to an end and be replaced by Erasmus+ in Wales?
Vivienne Stern: I actually do not know the answer to that.
Emma Meredith: I do not know that, but, again, we can follow that up.
Vivienne Stern: Oh, apparently—I have just remembered—Taith is being funded until 2028. Thanks to my colleague.
Lord Brennan of Canton: So it will overlap with Erasmus+?
Emma Meredith: Yes. Turing overlaps a little with Erasmus.
Q8 Lord Barrow: Thank you for being here; good to see you again. I listened with care to your plea that we think about the broader benefits of the scheme. However, I want to focus on the particular point of finance, because you said quite eloquently at the beginning the sorts of pressures the university sector is under. How are universities expecting Erasmus+ participation to impact on them financially?
Vivienne Stern: To be honest, I am worried about this. If you think about what happens when universities participate in Erasmus exchanges, the outbound student pays just 15% of their fee. The inbound student does not pay a fee. The seat is filled, if you like, but the university receives just a fraction of the cost of the delivery—a combination of the fee and the uplift they would have got through the strategic priorities grant. That was always a barrier to institutional uptake of Erasmus, and that will have got more difficult for universities to justify in an era when, as you know, lots of universities are making very significant cuts. I do think that is a barrier to us making the best use of this programme.
There was an earlier question from Lord Tugendhat asking about the appetite and interest. The interest is very strong, but I do worry that there will be a degree of rationing that goes on because of that cost problem.
Lord Barrow: The university—the institution—will cap how much they will do to make sure they can afford it. Was there anything on your side, Emma?
Emma Meredith: The issues are probably different from those in the college sector. It is very much money in, money out. Obviously, Erasmus is not a commercial programme and it is really used for shorter-term mobility or the key action 2 broader projects in the college sector.
Lord Tugendhat: Before I ask my follow-up, other people have declared former interests, so I should say that I was chancellor of the University of Bath. I had not realised that former interests counted, as it were.
So far, you have answered everything in terms of your UK responsibilities. Are there any differences in relation to Lord Barrow’s point, and others as well, between English and Scottish universities?
Vivienne Stern: It is a very good point. The mobility rates vary quite a lot between different parts of the UK. I think I am right in saying—perhaps we can write to the committee afterwards—that the mobility rate is highest in Northern Ireland. In England, the mobility rate is about half the Northern Irish rate, so there is a difference. Maybe that is partly about mobility to the Republic of Ireland. Scotland does slightly better than England; Wales does slightly worse. There will be an uneven distribution.
Of course, your point refers also to the fee arrangements in the four nations. The position that Scottish institutions are in will be slightly different in terms of financial flow and the 15% fee problem that will exist in England and Wales.
The Chair: If you could follow-up on that point in writing, that would be very helpful. Thank you very much indeed.
Q9 Baroness Suttie: How do you think we should measure success in the UK’s participation in Erasmus+? Emma, you touched on that a little bit already, but would you would like to say something more?
Emma Meredith: There are a number of key measures. We have touched on one of them a lot—the take-up and the participation rates. On the diversification of participation, we had approximately 5,000 vocational learners and staff going every year when we were in Erasmus previously. As we have said, we want to see broader participation for all the education sector and sport. That is another measure. A third, which is more difficult to measure, is perceptions of the scheme. That might be reflected in take-up.
Another one that we have touched on less this morning is the logistics of the scheme. Obviously, last time we were in Erasmus we were part of freedom of movement. We have to make sure that it is easy and straightforward for inbound and outbound in how we actually get people in and out of their countries for mobility. Currently, we have a list of exchange programmes that are on the Government’s authorised exchange scheme list. We are waiting to see what will happen with Erasmus to make sure that those inbound and outbound mobilities can flow very smoothly, because there are other changes as well—we have the ETIAS system coming in in the European Union, and the ETA or electronic authorisation for travel. A few logistical things have changed and we need to make sure that that is all in order.
Long-term tracking of the data is another advantage of being in Erasmus for the whole programme cycle, if we are able to reassociate for the next cycle, so that we are able to see the data over a longer term.
Vivienne Stern: I might start with the broader opportunities that Erasmus creates. I talked about Horizon and the link between the two programmes. For me, success would be strong participation by UK institutions across the full range of instruments in the programme. I would like to be able to show that Erasmus, the staff mobility opportunities and the opportunity to participate in the European alliances, are seeding the kind of collaborative networks that lead to strong, successful Horizon bids. There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between these two programmes.
We would like to see momentum. If we came back here in three years’ time, it would be good to see that, even if we were not back to where we were in 2018, we were on the road to achieving participation rates that are as strong as they were and perhaps on an upward trajectory.
I would like to see a recognition from the Government and opposition parties that this is not just a niche issue affecting universities and students but, rather, this is part of our relationship with Europe.
At a practical level, I would like to see participation among students from the groups least likely to experience mobility being well represented in that cohort.
The Chair: I think that feeds in very well to Lord Moynihan’s point.
Q10 Lord Moynihan of Chelsea: It does. Thank you both for coming. We have already talked a little bit about advantaged versus disadvantaged students. In fact, the percentage of disadvantaged students taking advantage of the Turing Scheme, according to the Department for Education, is 61%, so nearly two-thirds of all the students are disadvantaged. That is a very strong advantage for the Turing Scheme. There seems to be a general acceptance that the Erasmus scheme is a little bit for, let us say, the more advantaged, and a lot of the pressure to have the Erasmus scheme is from parents or whatever who are not disadvantaged.
If we go on not just to whether that student is advantaged or disadvantaged but to where they want to go, the British Council says that the three most attractive countries for young people to go to are Australia, the United States and Canada. Of 18 to 30 year-olds who left the UK, 9,000 went to the EU, 17,000 to Australia and New Zealand, and 13,000 went to North America, so the preference of these young people is not to go to the EU. I do not have any information about how many want to go to Turkey or Macedonia, just to cut off that bit about other countries participating.
What is the advantage for this country? What sort of education will they get? None of the top 25 universities is in the EU—not one. Sixteen of them are in the United States, we have got four, and Canada has got one. Why would we want to shift to advantaged students rather than disadvantaged? Why the shift, as we have heard, to have lots of EU students coming here, as opposed to our students going abroad? Why would we not want our students to go to where the better universities are, not the worse? If there is going to be more budget, as we have discovered there will be for this, why would it not go in expanding the Turing Scheme rather than us going on to the Erasmus scheme and getting rid of this apparently quite successful Turing Scheme?
Vivienne Stern: I am quite happy to start. First of all, Turing is designed to support students from the least advantaged groups. The bids that universities are asked to prepare to apply for funding ask them to design programmes that support widening participation.
Lord Moynihan of Chelsea: That is good, right?
Vivienne Stern: It is good, but there is a reason why the participation among students from the least advantaged backgrounds is what it is. Actually, it also means that there are probably lots of students who would have benefited individually and academically—and perhaps society would have benefited from them taking part in study, work or volunteering abroad—who were not able to do so because the design of the scheme was as it was. There is a budget for non-European mobility; 20% of the current programme is reserved for international credit mobility, alongside additional externally funded international opportunities.
. We would like to press the Commission to expand that envelope in the next programme, and I think there would be others in the programme who would align behind that view.
The other thing that I should mention is that quite a lot of current outbound mobility is supported either by students themselves—so there is not any funding or structural support—or by universities. A lot of that international mobility in the past, before Turing was created—and even now, while Turing exists—was, and is still being, institutionally funded or self-organised. That will continue. From my point of view, especially given the financial pressures, you would like as much as possible of that to be funded through Erasmus and as little as possible to fall on the shoulders of the institutions or the individuals.
Lord Moynihan of Chelsea: Why would you have to shift from Turing to Erasmus to get those benefits? That was my question.
Vivienne Stern: The way that Erasmus has evolved means that Erasmus now will be a little different from the way that it was when we were last in the programme. This is what we make of it. We have the opportunity to encourage students to take part in short mobility; yes, there are credit barriers to doing that, but that is a significant difference in the new programme. We know that appeals to students from the least advantaged groups. We also know that short periods of mobility can be a gateway to a willingness to take part in longer mobility. Institutionally supported very short placements—a week, two weeks—might encourage a greater proportion of students to put themselves forward for that slightly longer period of mobility. Part of that is going to be on us to make sure that we do not fall backwards under the new programme.
Emma Meredith: The Erasmus+ Programme Guide itself states, “When designing their projects and activities, organisations should have an inclusive approach, making them accessible to a diverse range of participants”, so the impetus is there to broaden the participation in Erasmus. Obviously, it is a scheme that benefits universities and colleges and others. From a college perspective, we find it hugely beneficial to have connections in Europe—for example, around adult education. At the AoC, we ran an adult project with our European Union partners through Erasmus. The committee may be familiar with the work that Alan Milburn is doing at the moment around NEETs; there has been a lot of talk about the Dutch education system and what they are doing with young people. There is a huge amount that we can continue to learn from all international partners, but particularly closer to home in the EU.
Q11 Lord Grantchester: Thank you to both our witnesses today for their interesting replies to our questions. With maybe faded memories in the sector, how is Erasmus+ being mobilised by the Government and the British Council? Is the outreach adequate? What are the key outstanding actions and areas of risk, please?
Emma Meredith: I mentioned that we have stakeholder groups set up with the Department for Education. We as an organisation, AoC, are working very closely with the British Council; today we actually have an information webinar on Erasmus opportunities with the British Council. They have mobilised very quickly through social media, developing their information to get that disseminated as widely as possible. We have touched on some of the risks already. A lot depends on the promotion of the scheme really reaching a wide range of organisations and combating perceptions—people might think, “Erasmus is not for me”. We need to be able to reach some of those people: for example, adult learners who might have barriers that Vivienne outlined earlier, with caring responsibilities, employment, et cetera. There is still work for us to do to address some of those barriers, to make sure that the programme will be a success, and also to combat perceptions that we are just in it for one year: that we are not in it for the longer term as well. We need to lay the groundwork for us to be in the scheme with a view to it being a longer-term participation.
Vivienne Stern: From our point of view, Universities UK has been hosting webinars and peer support sessions, so you can get those people who have had previous experience of participating in the scheme to share that with colleagues who are newer to the sector. We have an FAQ resource, which we keep expanding depending on the things that our members say they need from us. One-to-one advice is being provided. We are sharing best practice and we have had a long-standing network of people in universities who co-ordinate outward student mobility. That is a very active network that has existed for probably 15 years, and we are bringing it together regularly to make sure that people know what is going on, they know all the key dates, they know how to apply, and they have access to advice.
There are some risks. The biggest risk is in the compressed implementation timescale. We also really need to avoid delays in decision-making on those individual applications that universities have now submitted. As Emma said, we need early confirmation that this is not just a one-year opportunity: that it is worth putting the institutional resource into building this up because we will be in the next programme too. The earlier we get a sense of that being a priority, the better.
Lord Grantchester: Maybe being in readiness, even in the short term, to prepare for the design of the forward programme could be most important.
Vivienne Stern: Agreed.
Emma Meredith: For institutions that are new to Erasmus or have not engaged for a while, there is also the need to help them find the partnerships in the European Union. Again, that is something that we are looking to support them with, so they can make lasting partnerships. Some of the partnerships, certainly in the college sector, dropped off during Turing because it became very difficult to come into the UK to do an unpaid work placement, given the parameters of our visa and immigration system.
Q12 Baroness Smith of Newnham: You have already begun to touch on this question, but what do you think the Government should be seeking to achieve in the negotiations for the 2028-34 period, because that coincides with the EU’s multiannual financial framework? This is the opportunity for us to get in at the first stage of the negotiations. To what extent should we be thinking about short-term mobilities and the sort of opportunities that would then allow us to focus on widening participation among applicants rather than necessarily just the more privileged, who would probably find ways of doing exchanges anyway?
Vivienne Stern: We have a position paper on the next programme which we can share with the committee. Our priorities in relation to that next programme include greater flexibility around short-term and non-credit-bearing mobility. To expand on that, the issue is that you can undertake short-term mobilities under the new programme, but we think that it would be easier to do that if there was not a requirement that that should be credit bearing, because credit-bearing short-term mobilities is a great big faff. Having some flexibility about that would be helpful.
We have talked about wanting to expand the envelope for global mobility. That is not just about student mobility but about the institution-to-institution co-operation too. I mentioned the European Universities alliances, which are one of the very big ideas that the Commission and the member states have generated in the last five years or so. The UK has been a bit marginal to that huge new initiative. We do have universities participating in some of those networks and there are 14 UK universities who are already part of European Universities alliances. We would like there to be opportunities to pump-prime along with the stronger participation of UK universities, given that they missed out on earlier stages.
It would also be particularly helpful if this committee could draw attention to the potential that countries like the UK, who were previously fully associated but were out of the programme, should not be able to access partial association. That seems to be a restriction designed to prevent the UK from choosing a partial association route that would be available to some other countries. We do not think that that is right. We can see why the Commission might want to take that view—it brings back memories of cherry picking, does it not? However, I think that we should have the same rights as any other country to at least negotiate on the basis that perhaps partial association would be preferable. There are also some other details around the clarity of funding for the new scholarships for excellence fund.
Emma Meredith: Vivienne has covered a lot of the detail. From the vocational perspective, we would want to see a continued high profile for vocational and adult education within Erasmus as one of its features and that there was again that breadth of opportunity. We would also want to see that we are locked in for the duration of the next cycle. We need that to help build institutional partnerships, build on the awareness and build up engagement.
The Chair: Thank you. We could not pass up the great advantage of having you here today and not ask a rather separate but very important question, which I will hand over to Lord Elliott for.
Q13 Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell: First of all, thank you for coming today. It has been a fascinating discussion. Ms Stern, my question will build on Lord Barrow’s and your conversation with him. You talked about how university budgets are being squeezed. Media reports have suggested that one of the key EU requests in the current ongoing negotiations on the youth experience scheme is home fee status for EU students studying in British universities. What is your response to that? Can you give us an estimate of the potential financial hit to UK universities?
Vivienne Stern: This is a long-standing issue. The UK Government’s position was that this was not part of the terms of the current negotiation. There was previously a pretty firm view that it should not be introduced as a topic late in the day. From our point of view, it is widely understood that, for most universities and courses, the combination of the domestic fee in England and Wales does not cover the cost of delivery. The arrangements in Northern Ireland are different, and we have a whole different issue about home fee status in relation to Scottish students, which I will return to.
I should probably stop talking about vets, but it costs you about £30,000 to train a vet and you get £9,500 from the domestic tuition fee. You also get a top up through the strategic priorities grant. That has been cut and cut and cut and we have lost about 30% of its value in the last decade. It is then up to the institution to find ways to cover the rest of the gap. It is intolerable to have allowed a situation to emerge where the costs of delivery and the regulated fee plus the T-grant just do not meet in the middle.
That makes it very difficult to see how according home fee status to EU students would do anything other than making a very significant problem in the English system worse. If you are in Scotland, it is an even more alarming proposition because if you were given domestic fee status, and that meant that you did not pay any fees, then there would simply be no contribution towards the cost of study.
Our view has been that the Government are right to push back on this topic. I should say that there is a difference of views in our membership. Some of our members think that this is a better thing than others. However, we have discussed this again recently at the UUK board, and broadly speaking my sense is that under the current circumstances, with the financial pressures on the system, this would just make a very difficult situation worse, and the Government should therefore not do it.
Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell: Is there a figure for what the financial hit would be in static terms?
Vivienne Stern: The Russell group has produced an estimate that the cost for all UK institutions would be in the order of £580 million a year. That would differ and Russell group institutions are not the only high-tariff, highly selective, and therefore also higher-fee, institutions. However, generally speaking, institutions at the more research-intensive end of the spectrum would charge higher fees and would have higher delivery costs because they have kit and equipment and research-active staff to maintain. There would be a different picture in other institutions. That explains why some universities—for example, those represented by the University Alliance—would say that they are in favour of a concession here.
The Chair: It would be fair to say that this whole issue surrounding the youth experience scheme is actually collateral damage of a much wider problem, which is the unsustainable business model for higher education in England?
Vivienne Stern: Yes, it is a much wider problem that needs serious attention. If I may, I will just abuse this opportunity and say that this is something that the Government need to take a holistic view of. We have fragmented university policymaking, with the Home Office doing one thing and DSIT trying to do another. The absence of oversight over the interconnected policy decisions and how each one combines with the others creates what is becoming an increasingly unsustainable position.
I was speaking to one vice-chancellor this morning who said that the consequence of this home fee question would be them reducing the number of domestic students admitted. You would end up constraining opportunity for UK students as a result of making this concession. I do not know how widespread that would be. It was one conversation with one vice-chancellor who happened to be in this building this morning—but we ought to take it seriously.
Q14 The Chair: We have run over slightly. However, it seems that three issues have emerged and I would like your very brief comment on them.
First, although, as you say, you cannot assess either Turing or Erasmus+ on purely money-out and money-in grounds, and that there are much wider considerations, nevertheless, the Government are going to have to make a judgment on value for money. That will depend upon the wider benefits of the scheme, but also what the bill is going to be. It was the size of the bill that caused us to withdraw from Erasmus in the first place. That is still a fundamental issue, particularly if, as you say, the financial implications for universities are going to lessen the appetite for participation.
The second issue is really just a comment. When you are talking about the incentives for our people to participate, outgoing, my sense is that probably the greatest worry of undergraduates across the country is that they will not be able to get a job when they graduate. You said that there is clear evidence that people who participate in this scheme have increased opportunities of getting a job. I would have thought that is a pretty big incentive for anybody if it is put to them in that way.
Thirdly, I was going to ask whether designing into Erasmus+ a requirement as exists under Turing for a certain percentage of disadvantaged students or whatever is in our hands. However, from what I understood in answer to an earlier question, you said that that is not so and it is something that we would have to negotiate. You also mentioned your position paper, which we would be very pleased to see if we can. However, going back to the point you made about this being such an attractive place for overseas students, surely if we are clever enough in these negotiations, we have more than enough cards in our hands to get the right result for the UK.
Vivienne Stern: The “in our hands” point is a good one. There are features of the Erasmus programme which could be improved in the next iteration to help us do our fundamental job, which is to boost the participation of students from low-participation backgrounds. The pressure is on the UK system to encourage uptake among a more diverse group of students, and Erasmus can help us more, but the opportunity is still there to do that.
We are also going to spend a lot of money on this programme. We should make sure we do not underinvest in the promotion of it. That is partly a job for the national agency, but it is also partly a job for Government and for the university, college and other sectors. We need to champion the opportunity that it provides.
On your point about employability, there is a direct correlation between those people who have had an experience of mobility and employment outcomes. However, 20% of Erasmus mobility was also for the purposes of work. You can go using Erasmus mobility to work. That is also something that we can lean in to.
The Chair: Do you have any additional comments, Emma?
Emma Meredith: No, Vivienne has covered all the main points. We know the benefits in the sense of employability, technical and academic skills, and also personal skills—independence, confidence, all those non-measurable skills—that come out of Erasmus and Turing and the mobility opportunities. It is a hard argument to argue against.
The Chair: Thank you both very much indeed for giving us so much of your time this morning. You have been very generous and very helpful. We will now allow you to go somewhere and cool down. With that, I draw the public part of the session to a close.
