Tales of an Erasmus year abroad enchant us all, but beneath the thin veneer of glossy Instagram stories and long-winded anecdotes lies the reality of endless paperwork and administrative hell.
Initially, green under the gills, we were submitting our applications. As a law student, my GPA was good but not excellent. First and second-year courses are notoriously difficult and harshly marked: in one course, a third failed, and only one person achieved an ‘A’ (we still don’t know who, but we continue the hunt).
This general understanding led me to believe GPA wasn’t the sole deciding factor. For a year and a half, I’d consciously selected opportunities to reinforce my application, and few people wanted it as much as me. So, you can imagine my surprise when I was reserved.
My delusion that a detailed application would be genuinely reviewed. I amounted to a number. One that was apparently not high enough.
Nothing. Nowhere. Nada. I was crestfallen. Rarely had I felt so let down both by myself and the University. So, why was I rejected? Was I underqualified? Or, as I now believe, was it my own misunderstanding. My delusion that a detailed application would be genuinely reviewed. I amounted to a number. One that was apparently not high enough.
Then came the nitty-gritty paperwork. Another shock, this time of a fiscal nature. As someone who works during university, I was fully aware that going abroad would not be cheap. However, visa costs amounting to over a thousand pounds? That was not included in my calculations, and the University had no clue either. After asking for support, I was met with the typical response, which resembled, “That’s crazy!”. Granted, visa costs vary significantly between countries and looking into it would be far too much work for an encumbered GoAbroad team.
But perhaps – and call me mad – that a dash of reality might be included inside the vacuous cliches. Some of my friends paid one-tenth of what I did, some paid nothing, and some paid around the same. However, nobody knew how much they would have to pay.
This is fine for the 20% of Glasgow students from privately educated backgrounds (three times the national average), where these costs are but an afterthought. However, for people from less well-off backgrounds, the alleged “accessibility” of going abroad becomes only accessible to – well, those who can access it. Even then, you are a number, being shipped off. Work harder? Nah, no point. Be wealthy and study a leniently marked course? Yes, much better, the world is your oyster.
The Turing funding could have amended this disparity. For many, the fund acts as a lifeboat to studying abroad, but acquiring passage upon this vessel was a painfully opaque process. From vague communication to broken promises, student experiences regarding the funding have cast the GoAbroad team as the villain in this tale.
The missed deadlines can be attributed to three parts incompetence and one part plain laziness.
The missed deadlines can be attributed to three parts incompetence and one part plain laziness. A prime example of this is the Pathways system, designed to upload our documents required to receive the Turing funding, which was drip-fed to us. Their efforts are comparable to me cramming for my final exams, not for a university-led team with supposed years of expertise under their belts.
Like an ex-partner in the dead of night, we were informed about this mythical system in the middle of September. The message was crafted with an air of plausible deniability baked in to avoid any possible repercussions, and which offered only the faint notion of a timeline. Moreover, this information was only teased out of them after a fellow student took the initiative and contacted them first.
It is ridiculous that we are the ones to chase up the University for such things, yet heaven forbid the penalty we would face if we submitted something a few moments late. There is zero accountability or visible repercussions beyond the robotic “Thank you for your patience” message.
Again, this is fine for the students who are funded by the Bank of Mum and Dad, but for the majority undertaking a compulsory year abroad, it reeks of injustice and incompetence. People depend on this money to have the full experience and not feel as if they are on the financial back foot.
At risk of sounding like Nigel Farage, we’d say some reforms are overdue. Perhaps, for distributing places for law students, the School of Law handles this. Perhaps, they could look beyond a GPA and conduct a holistic assessment. Maybe calculate how much it costs to go abroad. Doesn’t sound too difficult, does it?
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