Braced for tough times

How is Europe’s debt crisis affecting interest in EU studies? We gauge the opinions of students and universities at European Voice’s 13th EU Studies Fair.

Androulla Vassiliou, the European commissioner for education, opened European Voice’s EU Studies Fair on 11 February by outlining her hopes for an expansion of EU policies to encourage study abroad. The audience evidently needed little encouragement: many of the hundreds of visitors to the fair – and the several hundred who toured the EU institutions with European Voice the day before – had already seized on the opportunity to study abroad as undergraduates, and were looking to head abroad again for master’s degrees.

Peter De Bakker, just 22 years old but already on his second master’s degree course, said that, after completing a business degree at Université catholique de Louvain, he intended to study at a university in central Europe. “Teachers can teach you, but pupils from other countries, they offer added value,” he said.

Roger Kölbener, a 26-year-old Swiss studying two master’s degrees simultaneously at the Université catholique de Louvain (in philosophy and ethics, and in political science and international relations), said that he was “counting on European integration”, because he wanted to work in European policymaking. “But do other students share my federalist enthusiasm? No,” he said.

Nor was Kölbener’s and De Bakker’s confidence in the job outlook universally shared. Anca Burca, a 28-year-old Romanian with business and management degrees from Romania and France and work experience in Canada and Singapore, said that full-time work in Brussels is in short supply and that she was looking for a short-term alternative to her current project-based work. For her, the European Commission’s Youth in Action programme offered “very interesting” options, particularly volunteering.

Cliona Ashe, a 22-year-old from Ireland working in Brussels before returning to her bachelor’s degree in economics, politics and liberal arts, said that those of her peers at University College Dublin who are interested in master’s degrees were generally looking for courses with clear job prospects.

That focus on jobs is the most noticeable impact of Europe’s economic problems, indicated universities among the 45 exhibitors. Two business-focused universities – IE in Madrid and Universität des Saarlandes in Germany – said that having a large number of practitioners on their academic staff was proving an advantage.

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Changing focus

Students’ anxiety about employment prospects – a factor also highlighted by Pernille Hermansen of the University of Southern Denmark and Justyna Jochym of Kraków’s Jagellonian University – is leading universities to pay extra attention to providing internships and other forms of careers support.

David Galbreath said that employability had always been a “huge” issue for European studies students at the University of Bath, where he is a lecturer. “Around 90% are thinking in terms of joining the Commission, even if they end up somewhere else.” Nonetheless, two UK features – the perception of European studies as being cultural studies and the UK government’s emphasis on utility in education – had contributed to its decision to change the title of its European studies degree to ‘contemporary European studies: politics, policy and society’.

Reforms at a national level are also affecting the flow of students: Sebastian Zeitzmann of Universität des Saarlandes said that undergraduate reforms are prompting more Germans to stay at home throughout their bachelor’s courses and head abroad for master’s, while Galbreath said fee hikes are now prompting many Britons to apply to Dutch universities.

The state of the jobs market may also be discouraging interest in European studies. Hermansen said that, while other courses are expanding, European studies are merely stable. David Coen of University College London said his experience was similar, noting too that there is a greater appetite for international policymaking than for European policymaking, even though the course is very similar.

Still, EU affairs are a specific attraction for some, including older and non-European students. Zeitzmann said that growing trade and the idea of the EU as a model of economic integration is attracting more Asian and Latin American students to the Universität des Saarlandes.

Adam Cygan of Leicester University said that his university had found a niche, offering distance-learning courses in EU law to 35- to 40-year-old lawyers seeking to boost their careers. And Justyna Korzym of Arboreus Online said that more businessmen and professionals are signing up to her company’s online courses about the EU. “When they start doing business with the EU, they realise they really need to know how it works.”