Erasmus is a program where young people in the European Union get scholarships to study for a year in a different European country. The goal is to make European youth better acquainted with each other.
But guess what? The EU decided to open the program to Africa and the Middle East. Because everything should help the ultimate goal of bringing more Africans and Middle Easterners to Europe. They could open it to North Americans, Australians, South Americans. But no, these are all unimportant and undesirable. It’s got to be Africa and the Middle East.
The EU was a gigantic mistake. All it does is strongarm countries to open their borders to the most unassimilable migrants in existence. EU enthusiasts always bring up Erasmus as a justification for the union’s existence bit now even the Erasmus will be done for.
Clarissa's Blog 
“EU decided to open the program to Africa and the Middle East”
I’m not as pessimistic about this as some people are. Erasmus is already open to Turkey and I’ve had a number of Turkish students in a course taught by myself and a colleague.
And there are already lots of programs for non-EU students. There are several hundred full-time Chinese students at my university and the country that sends the largest number of temporary exchange students is Kazakhstan.
I think this is about two things, one is it’s a more indirect way of sending money to NAfrica to help stem illegal entry into the EU (educational gunboat diplomacy?) and it’s a way to indirectly support secular education (and with it secular values) in NAfrica (mostly very unspectacular, like the rest of the Arab world).
There is potential for abuse of course and western EU countries are not very good at removing undesirables but it’s not entirely negative.
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I’m always glad for a more optimistic approach. But more Tunisians and Egyptians invariably means life begins to suck for female students and professors.
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“more Tunisians and Egyptians”
I’m hoping (against hope) that they’ll prioritize female students. My experience with Arabs mostly indicates that the women run rings around the men intellectually.
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Yes, but they are so infantile. It’s a heavy burden getting them to act like adults. Or at least older than 12.
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“Erasmus …. The goal is to make European youth better acquainted with each other”
It’s certainly not education. I’ve had a lot of Erasmus students over the years (would have more if I jumped through some administrative hoops I’m too lazy for). Biggest groups were Spanish (not terribly impressive) and Turkish (make the Spanish look like rock stars). There have been a few really good ones (I remember one from Croatia, another from Italy) but mostly they party rather than study.
I remember talking to a Polish student (fanatical about Chinese) who’d returned from an Erasmus stint in… Portugal what he’d learned and he just laughed. He didn’t know Portuguese before going and hardly anyone at the university spoke English very well…
But despite these problems I still think the program is very worthwhile just in things like building educational and social capital.
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Sometimes it works educationally. I have a family member whose journey to a math ph.d. in the French system started with a 1-semester Erasmus stint in undergrad.
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As they say in relation to psychoanalysis, a person who ways results will scratch them out of a doorknob. A personal wfp doesn’t want results won’t get them even from Freud himself.
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Interesting. My best students by and large have been Erasmus students, mainly from Eastern and Central Europe, but also Spain, Italy, Germany… In a different league from the natives (but then I work in a small, inbred, nepotism- and corruption-ridden country where there is no incentive for anyone local to work hard).
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Love this comment.
Are you Greek? Because this is what my friend from Greece always says.
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I wish! Actually, I don’t 🙂 No, I’m a Canuck stuck in Nordic Europe (cue your “Butt in Norway” post, although I’m not in Norway), but it does feel like Greece sometimes.
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