Higher Education: Financial Pressures

Lord Leong Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in education and training and as chair of the Council for Education in the Commonwealth as set out in the register. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth, whom I hold in the highest regard in this field, on securing this debate. This subject not only is very close to my heart but draws attention to serious concerns in the HE sector, many of which have been raised by Members in the Chamber this afternoon. I have so much to say that there was a danger that this speech would become like a sprawling undergraduate essay: full of enthusiasm for the subject, but ultimately unfocused and ineffective. So I will address one very specific topic, which, if it were an essay question, would be: “Compare and contrast the merits of Erasmus+ and the Turing scheme and identify what steps you would recommend to deliver the best outcomes for the students and institutions involved.”

Here are the facts. Erasmus was formed in 1987 and evolved into Erasmus+ in 2014 through the consolidation of various other mobility programmes for people who were not at university. The UK was one of the 11 founding members. One common misconception, even among many of its supporters, is that Erasmus+ is exclusively a scheme for EU members and students. This is not the case. It is a global success story, yet the UK is no longer part of it because this Government decided to end participation from 31 December 2020—Brexit day. Non-EU countries, both within Europe and elsewhere, are eligible to join. Norway, Iceland and Turkey are full members of the programme. Others, from Morocco to Armenia to Ukraine, are eligible as programme partners. More than 80 countries around the world participate in one or more Erasmus+ scheme.

Secondly, since the programme operates over a seven-year funding cycle, students and institutions can promote and plan their participation in a relatively stable environment. In the period 2014 to 2020, the UK received nearly €1.1 billion for 6,892 projects involving 331,765 participants. This represents 7.8% of the total Erasmus+ budget and 6% of all participants out of 80-odd countries. Our involvement was considerable.

Some might argue that it is unfair to contrast Erasmus+ with the Turing scheme, which was announced in 2020 and commenced in September 2021, as it is not yet quite two years old and was launched into an educational environment still reeling from the impact of the pandemic. However, even allowing for these mitigating circumstances, initial comparisons do not reflect well. Although institutions are glad that at least something is on offer, the Turing application process is considerably more bureaucratic, evaluation is less transparent and, as it runs on an annual basis, it is inherently less secure for planning and promotion.

Moreover, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has already mentioned, Turing is structured as a one-way scheme, supporting UK students who wish to study abroad but with no reciprocal offer to students from the EU or anywhere else in the world to come to the UK. For several reasons, including the world-leading reputations of many UK universities, and the fact that most other countries learn English as their second language, the UK hosted many more visiting students under Erasmus+. This enriched courses in the UK with cultural vitality—students from more disadvantaged economic backgrounds could apply—as well as the obvious benefits from money spent in the UK economy while students were living here. There is no such opportunity under the Turing Scheme.

Lastly, I come to the issue of unnecessary divergence. UK qualifications are already moving away from European qualifications framework standards, which means that eventually UK qualifications will not be equally recognised by the EQF and our young people will be further disadvantaged and disfranchised from studying on the continent. Given all that, why the Government decided to leave Erasmus+ and replace it with the evidently inferior Turing Scheme remains, if noble Lords will forgive me, a complete enigma—one that even its namesake would struggle to resolve.

Labour has been clear that, when we are in government, our education mission will be to:

“Break down the barriers to opportunity … preparing young people for work and for life.”


We recognise that, in an increasingly interconnected world, the greater the educational opportunities that we provide for our students and young people, the brighter our nation’s future will be.