Studying in Europe

In a previous post I discussed the numbers of British graduates that chose to study for their postgraduate degree in the US. Apparently more than 2500 did so last year alone citing reasons such as expanding their horizons, availability of funding and the increasing employability prospects.

I was surprised therefore to read this article on the Independent which finds that the opposite seems to be true for British Graduates studying on the continent. Many of us have heard about the Erasmus scheme at some point, which gives undergraduates the chance to spend part of their course studying overseas. A chance that more than 200,000 students took last year and more than 10,000 of those students were British!

But have you heard of Erasmus Mundus? This extension of the Erasmus scheme was started 6 years ago by the European Commission to try and attract the brightest postgraduates to Europe. As well as helping European postgraduates to study in another European country other than their own Mundus gives non-European students the chance to study for a Masters or PhD on the continent.

The scheme is still relatively small with 115 Masters and 13 doctoral programmes on offer. The Masters programmes are particularly exciting as they are provided jointly by at least 3 institutions and the students spend time at each one during their course. Between 2004 and 2008 53 UK Higher Education Institutions were involved in these courses so it appears that the UK is actively engaging in the Mundus scheme. Or is it?

In the last 5 years only 25 British graduates have taken part in Mundus compared to 123 from France and 93 from Spain. Course fees are not really prohibitive either ranging from 2000 – 8000 Euros which is comparable with many UK courses. So why don’t the British seem to be engaging in the scheme?

Part of the reason, despite the average course fees, may have been the fact that most scholarships have been awarded to non-Europeans. But this is set to change as scholarships are becoming more readily available for Europeans.

The most likely reason, in my opinion, comes down to advertising of opportunities on offer. The transition from undergraduate to postgraduate can be a confusing and hectic time for many students. As I discussed in my article on studying in the US, how many of us really consider all of the options when making the decision to study postgraduate – especially when our home universities make it relatively straightforward to stay on.

Unless schemes like this receive more coverage and reach the students at the right stage of their decision making process how many people are really going to seriously consider what is potentially a massive upheaval – even for a prestigious scheme like Erasmus Mundus?

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