Commentary on Brexit in this country has focused on political and economic issues, with little attention given to how it may affect higher education. The Erasmus scheme, currently embracing the EU, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway, Turkey and Switzerland, has become a major feature in European higher education. Since its inception in 1987, more than 3,000,000 students have studied in partner European institutions.

The scheme is rightly claimed to be the world’s most successful student mobility scheme. Students receive a small grant to facilitate their studies, but the scheme does not generate revenue for participating institutions. Its fundamental purpose is to promote mobility within higher education in Europe.

Erasmus has been transformative for the students who have availed of it. In addition to the obvious educational and cultural enrichment that foreign study entails, there is evidence that Erasmus students are more employable and are more likely to work in another country. What’s more, research shows that about 25 per cent of Erasmus students have met their life partners while studying on Erasmus, and 1,000,000 Erasmus babies have been born in three decades of the scheme!

While the UK has voted to exit from the EU, its immediate participation in various EU schemes, including Erasmus, remains unaffected. However, the UK’s long-term participation in Erasmus will be decided during the exit negotiations, and already concerns are being expressed as to the possible consequences of UK exclusion from Erasmus.

Much will depend on whether the UK remains within the single market and accepts free movement of EU nationals, the connected issues that will be at the heart of negotiations. Hostility towards the idea of unrestricted free movement was a significant factor in the vote to leave the EU. However, the principle of free movement is currently of central importance in EU thinking and participation in the single market by non-EU countries requires acceptance by of that principle. This also applies to Erasmus.

Excluded

It is impossible to predict what course the UK’s exit negotiations will take and it is not beyond the bounds of political ingenuity that a compromise on free movement will emerge that preserves the UK’s participation in the single market and, consequently, Erasmus. But as things stand, if free movement is not accepted by the UK, it will find itself in the same position as Switzerland and will be excluded from Erasmus.

Were that to happen, what consequences would ensue for the rest of Europe? The UK is the fourth most popular destination for Erasmus students; in 2012-2013, it received 27,000 students and sent out 14,500. The equivalent figures for Ireland were 6,200 received and 2,700 sent out. (Incidentally, in the same year Ireland sent 454 students to the UK and received 194.) In proportionate terms, Ireland receives and sends more Erasmus students than the UK, but the significant figure is that more than 33,000 students in all sought and availed of an English-language experience, which represents more than 12 per cent of all student mobility under Erasmus in 2012-2013.

Irish higher education institutions could come under immense pressure to absorb much of the shortfall that would follow from UK exclusion from Erasmus, but under the current Erasmus regime we we would not be able to accept many more than we receive at present. (Already we receive more than twice the number we send out on Erasmus.)

Of course, English-language instruction is now available in an increasing number of EU universities and the options are not confined to Ireland. However, there is a considerable difference between being taught through the medium of English in a non-anglophone environment and the more rounded cultural enrichment that comes from living as well as studying in an English-speaking country.

Special measures

These considerations point to the desirability of a political solution that would keep the UK in Erasmus. From the perspective of UK universities, there is a real fear that its institutions will become isolated from the increasingly globalised world of higher education and will lose the enrichment that Erasmus students bring to their campuses. From a European perspective, the loss of access to UK universities, many of them leading global institutions, would entail a regrettable fragmentation of European higher education and reduced opportunities for future student generations.

Prof Paul McCutcheon is vice-president academic and registrar at the University of Limerick