€30 billion on EU programme for (mostly) EU27 students

UK gets 1/3rd of the benefit it should

Most popular destinations for UK students: USA and Australia

Yesterday we ran an article on free movement relating to young people, where we showed that only 0.5% of higher education students benefit from the EU’s expensive Erasmus+ programme.

Coincidentally, some hours later the EU released its latest annual report on Erasmus+ for 2017. Here we bring you the key facts to know.

Brexit Facts4EU.org Summary

The EU's Erasmus+ Student Programme

UK students using Erasmus+ to study abroad : 9,615
Non-UK students using Erasmus+ to study in UK : 18,702
Almost twice as many EU students benefit, compared to UK students
Total number of UK students : 1.87 million
Proportion of UK students using the EU’s Erasmus+ programme : 0.51%
Pro-rata by population, the UK should be 11.0% of the total Erasmus+ student numbers
In fact the figure for the UK is only 4.3%
Non-UK Erasmus+ students benefit 2.5 times more than UK students, pro-rated by population
EU’s Erasmus+ budget is set to double, from €14.7 billion to €30 billion

According to the UN, more UK students go to the US and Australia than the rest of the EU combined.

[ Sources: EU Commission Erasmus+ 2017 report | Universities UK 2017 data | UNESCO 2017 data | HESA ]

What is the EU’s Erasmus+ programme?

There are many ways in which the EU channels British taxpayer money back to the UK, dressed as though it were ‘Funded by the EU’. One of these is the Erasmus+ programme

Erasmus+ is one of those EU ‘projects’ which even Brexiteer politicians say might they might want to keep paying into after Brexit. The government has as yet made no guarantees, so this is the ideal time for everyone to learn about this (supposedly) educational programme.

Erasmus+ is “the EU's programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe,” says the EU Commission.

This new version of Erasmus started in 2014, with a 40% increase in funding and a significant increase in its scope.

This scope now covers matters which have little to do with higher education, such as ‘youth exchanges’ and ‘volunteering’. It even includes programmes to “develop new teaching practices or curricula” – something most people probably think is the role of the Dept for Education in the UK.

Erasmus funds and “promotes – among other things – good governance, social inclusion, the fight against racism, dual careers, and physical activity for all.”

1/3rd of the budget goes on “partnerships and reforms of the education and youth sectors”

What does all this cost?

In the EU's current budgeting period, the cost of Erasmus+ is €14.7 billion.

In the EU's next budgeting period from 2020 the cost of Erasmus is projected at €30 billion - more than double.

Observations

"But Erasmus+ is all about education and so many young people benefit"

Many British people (including our young people) imagine that Erasmus+ is all about giving our students a chance to study for all or part of their degrees abroad. However this is just a minority part of the whole programme.

This entire project is much more insidious and far-reaching in its aims.

Erasmus+ is no longer all about education in the sense most people understand the word, and the majority of it has nothing to do with degree courses. In common with most other areas of the EU's activities, Erasmus has expanded way beyond its original brief.

In common with many people, the Brexit Facts4EU.Org team care deeply about educational opportunities for young people. We believe that students who go to study for a period in another country benefit enormously, as do students who come to the UK to study.

No-one is suggesting for one moment that students should be prevented from studying abroad after Brexit. The key question is how the money that is being spent - by the UK government and by the EU spending UK money. Everyone would surely agree that UK taxpayer money should be wisely allocated to the benefit of as many British students as possible, and not to subsidise students from the EU27.

We simply don't believe Erasmus+ offers value for money, as is so often the case with EU programmes, and that Brexit offers an opportunity to present students with a wider range of possibilities.

25 Jan 2019

[ Sources: EU Commission Erasmus+ 2017 report | Universities UK 2017 data | UNESCO 2017 data | HESA ]

Something to say about this? Scroll down for reader comments

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Reader Comments 7

1. Tamas, London , Friday, January 25, 2019, 07:55:

I might be wrong, but I would say that this Erasmus+ seems to have a spooky similarity to me with the kind of summer camps I experienced. Growing up in a communist country, we had these 'rewarded holidays' for students producing the best academic result each year. The first one I attended as a teenager, I naively thought 'yippee, we're going to have a break from everything and have a great time with my friends'. But - oh no. From about the second day it become obvious that it was in fact just another form of indoctrination. It was carried out in a nicer and more sophisticated way from the everyday brainwashing, nevertheless it also was more concentrated and intense.
Next year I "unfortunately got sick", so couldn't attend. From then on every year I made sure not to make it to the top 3 students, to avoid nomination.
I read your previous articles about the 'European Solidarity Corps' and I feel that this and Erasmus+ both seem to have the same objective. Thank you for providing some facts on this.

2. Not4EU, London , Friday, January 25, 2019, 09:00:

Mrs May has previously mumbled about 'a number of institutions that we would like to remain as a participant' after we leave. No more detail, but she has used Erasmus+ as an example.
I want to see a list of these institutions/agencies.
I want to know exactly what the cost of participation is.
I want to see a proper cost/benefit to the UK of each. This should include the intangible benefits as well as whether participation will require a foreign power determining our law in certain areas.
Only then can we see if there's merit in our participation as can no longer trust those elected to govern in our interests to act in our interests.
Your short cost/benefit analysis shows that Erasmus+ is not one of them. We can operate our own global fund, sponsoring overseas studies across the world for our students, which does appear to be to majority anglosphere countries. A single point of management under our own rules. I'm quite sure that the EU will continue benefitting (& paying) from it's students studying here where some institutions are amongst the highest rated in the world, unlike the EU's institutions. We must also eradicate the Monnet positions, pure propaganda positions for a foreign power & ideology, from our educational establishments.

3. Patrick F , Friday, January 25, 2019, 09:39:

I agree (not for the first time!) With Not4EU.
Furthermore, I want details of the "financial obligations" we owe the EU to make up the figure of a £39bn divorce settlement, or is that figure in euros?
What are the obligations? How many obligations are there? How much is each obligation?
No evidence, nothing to pay, as Martin Howe QC and Charlie Elphicke MP have already reported.

4. Bill Swansong , Saturday, December 26, 2020, 12:24:

The Erasmus scheme was a brilliant deal for Britain. It enabled a great exchange scheme, free of cost to undergraduates, to operate Europe-wide. The headline figure quoted is false: it takes no account of the additional millions of pounds brought into the UK by students and their states to cover additional expenditure from everything from books to meals. Don't believe the Johnson lie! Erasmus was a net winner for Britain. We will now be losing ca. £36 Mio per annum thanks to his bullshit deal. Well done Boris. More millions down the pan -- and more lives ruined.

5. Christine M , Saturday, December 26, 2020, 13:21:

Bill Swansong, ha-ha who are you trying to fool? You probably mean it was a brilliant deal for you. Are you a teacher of some kind by any chance, who benefited from Erasmus? What you call “free of cost” is actually money generated by hard working people’s tax. Your analysis is entirely false, as it’s based on the wrong assumption that without ERASMUS there have been zero EU students coming to the UK. That is not a very clever assumption. Your figure is pure guesswork, which makes it a bit rich to call actual data backed figures ‘false’. (Gosh, I do hope after all that you're not a teacher...)

6. Paul B , Thursday, January 07, 2021, 11:54:

Erasmus, like the Science 2000 funding was something to which we seemed to pay in far more than we got out. Of course most with leatherette elbow patches on their jacket will argue that it was great, the ability to exchange Global Warming propoganda, see who's scientific work would be allowed to move forward by the outdated and now politicised peer review process.
Erasmus is great if you want to encourage left leaning 'I want to teach the world to sing' Coca-Cola hippies, however, I'd ask a few simple questions: How many of Britains greatest minds spent their formative years bouncing around Europe being lovely to everyone. It seems to me that most were home grown, home trained and free thinking indivuduals who worked hard and achieved.

7. Mark Edwards , Friday, January 08, 2021, 11:15:

This is not a balanced review of the scheme, it is a one sided opinion, not supplying enough information to make an objective and reasonable assessment by the reader.

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