Brexit

The United Kingdom and the European Union have concluded a new trade and cooperation agreement. The agreement has been provisionally approved by both the European Union and the United Kingdom. New rules have applied since 1 January 2021; final approval will follow before March 1, 2021. More info:

• Department of Education and Training (Only in Dutch)
• Epos Flanders (Only in Dutch)
• UK Government

On March 25, UUki organized a webinar about the new Turing scheme. You can find the link to the webinar via this link. You can download the PowerPoint presentation here.

Summary

The deadline for UK higher education institutions to apply for scholarships is April 16, 2021, so that's very soon. Nevertheless, we would like to highlight a number of other interesting points from the webinar:

1. Turing funding is available for outgoing student mobility from the UK during their studies and for recent graduates (up to 12 months after date);
2. The minimum duration for a mobility is 4 weeks.
3. Special attention is paid to under-represented groups.
4. There is no template for bilateral cooperation agreements. Existing chords to which an annex is added can therefore be used.
5. British higher education institutions are free to decide whether or not to grant fee waivers. This would be the subject of bilateral agreements between partner institutions.
6. Until now, there has been an imbalance between the number of incoming exchange students in the UK compared to the number of outgoing exchange students from the UK to Europe. During the presentations several examples were given of short mobilities of 4 weeks, eg summer campus + internship; summer course + language course; research internship in the summer; custom made group mobility of 4 weeks; medical internships including midwifery… These would be formulas that would be needed or that would make it easier to convince British students and thus persuade British higher education institutions to allow, for example, a fee waiver for incoming students. (which, for example, go for a semester).
7. If your higher education institution can offer these types of short programs for students from UK partners, the UK higher education institution should refer to them in its Turing Scheme application file so that the jury can be convinced of an offer that meets the needs of UK higher education institutions and that it may be possible to achieve a better balance between inbound and outbound mobility.
8. Wales is preparing an additional scholarship program with scholarships for students and staff, which would also include a 30% budget for inbound mobility. This program may be available from 2022.
9. The Erasmus projects of the expiring Erasmus + program were extended in the UK until 2023. Some higher education institutions would mainly use them for staff mobility, others also for student mobility to Europe, so that they would initially focus on non-European partners for the Turing Scheme.
10. UUKi is aware of the difficult visa procedure for inbound intern mobility in the UK and is making efforts to simplify it. UUKi is simultaneously calling on European partners to lobby for simple entry conditions into the UK, if necessary.