Universities brace for Brexit impact

Britain’s exit from the EU could leave institutions underfunded and force them to recruit more overseas students

Thousands of British students are worried they will not be able to study abroad when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union.

Using the hashtag #SupportStudyAbroad, students are taking to social media to voice their concern that Brexit will end UK involvement in Erasmus, an EU program that funds overseas learning.

“Studying abroad introduced me to an international network of students who now have careers in industries worldwide,” one student wrote on Twitter. “This is exactly the sort of global Britain we should aspire towards!”

Erasmus has a budget of 14.7 billion euro ($16.6 billion) and serves 4 million European students each year.

When the UK leaves the EU, it is unclear whether British students will remain eligible for the program, and the UK government has no current plans to set up a national alternative.

Without funding, 17,000 UK students will miss out on study opportunities abroad next year, according to advocacy group Universities UK.

Uncertainty over the movement of students, staff, and funds to and from the UK post-Brexit is being felt right across the higher education sector.

Universities are readying themselves for several eventualities brought on by Brexit, including fewer applications from students in other EU nations and the loss of billions of pounds in contributions from EU research funds.

Should the UK lose access to EU education funding, heads of British universities say they will be forced to recruit a larger proportion of fee-paying students from foreign nations beyond the EU, including China.

Every seven years, the EU allocates a budget for research projects across its member nations through the Horizon program.

Historically, the UK has received more than it has put in. Between 2007 and 2013, the UK contributed 11 percent of EU research funding and received 18 percent.

The current program – Horizon 2020 – started in 2014 and is worth 77 billion euro.

So far, the UK has received 14 percent of the entire budget, and four British universities are the top recipients out of all European institutions.

Between 2014 and 2018, the University of Cambridge, University College London, Imperial College London, and the University of Oxford received a combined 960 million pounds in funding from Horizon.

More than 5,600 higher or secondary education establishments in the UK have received Horizon funding, and thousands of private-sector organizations have also benefitted from the program.

The funding goes to many crucial fields, including medical research, says Nancy Rothwell, president of the University of Manchester.

“Vital and transformative research programs risk being disrupted, such as our work on proton-beam therapy for cancer patients, which allows more precise targeting of tumors,” Rothwell said.

In the event of a no-deal Brexit, the UK government has agreed to cover some of the grant money that UK researchers are already due to receive from the EU.

However, the government has not agreed to compensate researchers that are in the process of applying for grants from two EU-funded schemes – the European Research Council, or ERC, and parts of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, otherwise known as the MSCA.

“Researchers who have already spent months or even years preparing funding bids would be left high and dry, including those whose application would be stuck in the middle of the evaluation process,” said Rothwell.

The ERC and MSCA are projected to contribute large amounts of funding to the UK during the next two years, for research projects that include new cancer treatments and the study of climate change.

“If we don’t have access to a domestic alternative, in the event of a no-deal, the UK university sector could lose 1.3 billion pounds over the next 18 months,” said Vivienne Stern, director of UK Universities’ international arm. “We regard that as utterly unacceptable.”

Looking further ahead, it is not yet known whether the UK will participate in the next EU research program, Horizon Europe, which will run from 2020 to 2026 and have an estimated budget of up to 100 billion euros.

The UK’s universities minister, Chris Skidmore, said the government “wants to have the option” to associate with Horizon Europe “depending on the outcome of negotiations”.

“In the event that the UK does not associate to Horizon Europe, the government is committed to continuing to back UK researchers and innovators,” said Skidmore.

After Brexit, the UK could choose to collaborate with Horizon Europe as an “associated country”, examples of which include Iceland and Norway.

“There is a strong possibility that we will associate to Horizon Europe, and that we will contribute to the budget for that program, but that is not secure yet,” said Stern from UK Universities.

Historically, associated countries have had little say in how the budget is managed, and receive markedly less funding. There are currently 16 associated countries that collectively receive less than a tenth of Horizon 2020 funding. Stern said the UK would likely play a much larger role than other associated countries.

“I would contend that the UK has the strongest research system in Europe, so it isn’t like Turkey, or even Norway – we would be a massive player in that group of associated countries and we’d be contributing a massive amount to the budget,” she said.

Even so, British universities are exploring measures to offset a potential loss of funding from Europe.

The heads of Glasgow University, University College London, and Buckingham University have all said they will have to recruit increasing numbers of international students to make up for any fall in income.

Non-EU students pay fees that are often up to three or four times as much as British and EU students.

Anton Muscatelli, chairman of the Russell Group, a body representing 24 research universities in the UK, said overseas students could comprise up to half of the student body at many British institutions if EU funding is lost.

Application rates from EU nationals have been erratic since the referendum in 2016. In 2017, EU applications to UK universities plummeted by 7 percent, before increasing by 3 percent and 1 percent in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

Meanwhile, the number of applications from outside the EU has risen dramatically, climbing by 11 percent in 2018 and 9 percent this year, according to the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service.

This year, UK universities received a record 21,000 applications from China, up from 17,000 last year. By comparison, there were 18,850 applications from Wales this year, so if applications from China continue as projected, there could soon be more Chinese than Welsh students studying at UK universities.

“The weak pound has been a huge opportunity for overseas students,” said Stern. “And the government has proposed a longer period for graduates of UK universities to stay and work in the UK. There is definitely an opportunity for Chinese students and students from other parts of the world created by Brexit.”

Contact the writer at angus@mail.chinadailyuk.com