The UK’s lost its allure for European students – thanks to Boris Johnson’s handling of Covid and Brexit

The UK’s university halls once sheltered the dreams of millions of young Europeans. Attracted by the prospect of red-brick colleges, immersion into the English language, vibrant student life, they sought the status of the claim of having “studied in Britain".

Countless students throughout the continent crossed the Channel, willing to spend thousands of pounds for an education they could often have gotten for free, to obtain that prized British degree.

Fast forward to 2020, however, and these dreams have found a new home. Germany now appears to be stealing the UK’s crown as Europe’s top university destination. With an increasing number of EU students shunning Britain, put off by rising tuition fees and Brexit mayhem, the “British dream” that inspired so many Europeans my age is slowly dying.

It’s hard to express just how deeply the aspiration of studying in Britain is ingrained in the collective European psyche. The island has long been perceived as Europe’s transatlantic gateway. Indeed, only America’s campuses managed to rival the gravitas of UK institutions – something that has repeatedly  captured the imagination of wide-eyed youngsters across the continent.

Unlike institutions across the Atlantic however, Britain offered a comparably-attractive higher education for a decidedly lower – albeit still substantial – cost, that was much closer to home. Studying in the UK represented the best of both worlds – the possibility to study in the beating heart of the world’s lingua franca but without the extra travel.

Such widespread enthusiasm for getting a British education is backed by the figures. The UK has long been the top higher education and Erasmus+ destination for EU students, and has attracted a diverse cohort of European college-aged individuals, from teenage secondary school leavers to postdoctoral researchers.

Post-war Britain successfully managed to foster its spotless reputation for boasting attractive, competitive universities high up in the international league tables, alongside becoming renowned for its lucrative employment opportunities and thriving multiculturalism. Even more so, the UK’s soft power as a leading global hub of creative industries helped immortalise its institutions in a plethora of literary and cinematic works, thus fuelling the academic ambitions of millions across Europe.

All of this sparked my own aspirations from an early age. As a young Italian child growing up in Ireland, the prospect of studying in England had a certain mystique to me. I remember my mother speaking fondly of her summer study experience as a teenager in Brighton in comparison to those spent in Italy.

I watched and read the onslaught of films and books which romanticised life in England’s elite institutions, from Chariots of Fire to Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights trilogy. Little would I have imagined that one day I would wind up living in England and completing my degree in Oxford, the university of my dreams.

Come 2020, however, and things look starkly different to when I first came to England fifteen years ago. The Brexit process continues to erode the UK’s importance on the European stage, with Boris Johnson and his cabinet seemingly set on leaving the EU in the “hardest” terms possible, ripping up economic and cultural ties with Britain’s closest neighbours.

The country already appears prepped to leave the Erasmus+ programme, and to top this off, the home tuition fee cap of £9,250 in England and £9,000 in Wales will no longer apply for EU, EEA and Swiss students. Faced with the likelihood of having to pay exorbitant fees for a simple university education, it comes as no surprise that young Europeans are looking to study elsewhere.

One survey from earlier this year suggested that up to 84 per cent of prospective EU students would not come to the country if tuition fees doubled. Federico, a 23-year-old student from Italy and friend of mine, is one such person. An avowed Anglophile who had planned to obtain his Master’s degree in Britain, he has now decided to go elsewhere, stating that the “increase in fees hasn’t resulted in any improvement in career opportunities and the quality of education offered”, and is thus “unacceptable”.

Once heralded as a beacon of progress, innovation and liberalism, the UK has increasingly gained the reputation of being a country that has forfeited its widely-esteemed values for a petty and self-destructive nationalism. The government’s mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis, best exemplified in the fiasco over Christmas regulations, has only added insult to injury.

As much as I consider the UK to be my adoptive home, and have cherished the wonderful experience I had pursuing my university education here, all of this has contributed to my own decision to move back to Europe for my upcoming PhD research project.

This “dream” of many Europeans for a British education won’t die immediately. UK universities will undoubtedly remain high in the rankings for many years to come, and will do their best to continue attracting talent from across the continent and beyond. However, unless the UK somehow manages to effect a wholesale reversal of the damaging political decisions taken over the past four years, the consequences to its academic reputation in Europe will be long-lasting.

Once, Britain truly attracted the “brightest and the best” which this government so desperately seeks to bring to its shores; now – in many cases – students will have turned their eyes, and set their hopes upon elsewhere.