I know, I know - it's hardly the most exciting topic. But we've had a look at the ref' from a PG perspective over at FindAMasters & FindAPhD and think the topic is fairly important if you're considering a postgraduate degree.

Feel free to take a look / share / disagree / ignore completely:

Also, as you can probably see, we have a shiny new blog over on the 'Masters & 'PhD sites. You're a knowledgeable and helpful bunch. We're open to contributions.

Cheers!

Mark

Thanks for posting. Good to know that that Erasmus is independent of EU membership!

Thanks - it is in theory and should be in practice. I can't personally see a scenario in which the UK ceases to participate - that wouldn't make sense from anyone's pov.

A problem with this article is that it does not frame the debate within the dynamic context of UK politics (just my humble opinion). We have to remember that current and future elected UK governments can and will make decisions about university fees. And this is the same of course for other EU (and non-EU) countries across the world. Fees can and will change.

Hope it is OK to be critical : )

Of course it is - welcome, even.

And yes, it's difficult to predict the future and we should be wary of over-simplifying any of this.

That said, so long as the UK is an EU member the 'dynamism' of its politics are limited with respect to discrimination within fee and funding arrangements.

Postgraduate fees aren't directly regulated by government and universities are free to raise them. What they can't do is charge an EU student any more than a UK student - and there's nothing the government can do about that.

The situation with loans is similar. No future UK government can remove EU students' entitlement to public student funding whilst the UK is still a member. It can alter the postgraduate loans scheme itself, of course, but it can't discriminate within it.

By the same token, EU countries could introduce or raise fees, but they wouldn't be able to charge extra to UK students except in certain circumstances (the Czech Republic, for example, does charge - but only for courses that aren't in Czech).

It's worth mentioning that the Brexit campaign leaders are prioritising stopping free movement of people. Switzerland voted to not allow free movement for Croatians in a referendum, after Croatia joined the EU - among the first programmes they were suspended from was Erasmus.

That is a really good point! I only found that out recently.