The ERASMUS experience: bureaucracy, debt, and deflated grades

On Saturday 1 August, The Times' Brussels correspondent Ivan Camilleri penned an article that surely came as no surprise to student activists. According to statistics issued by the European Commission, this year the number of University of Malta students taking advantage of the ERASMUS programme has reached an all-time low since Malta joined the EU in 2004. Malta now enjoys the dubious honour of being among 10 member states that have seen a drop of 10-15 per cent in ERASMUS participation over the past five years.

One wonders why Maltese students would pass up a golden opportunity to spend three to twelve months studying for free in a European University, while still receiving their stipend.

Put quite bluntly, the ERASMUS experience (particularly its aftermath) has proven to be a veritable nightmare for a number of students. Their ordeals have been passed on from student to student by word of mouth, inevitably putting quite a few students off the ERASMUS programme altogether.

Don't get me wrong. I've never heard a single student deny that ERASMUS is the most mind-broadening cultural and educational initiative available for university students. Unfortunately, what should be an unforgettable experience is often ruined by the confusion and bureaucracy that reigns supreme at the University of Malta and by the lack of harmonisation among universities participating in the ERASMUS programme.

Over the past two years, the independent student newspaper The Insiter has witnessed an increase in the number of complaints it has received from Maltese students who went on ERASMUS.

Two years ago, a group of irate students approached the newspaper as they had received their ERASMUS grants only towards the end of their exchange. These students had factored in this grant when budgeting for their ERASMUS trip. Imagine the annoyance of only receiving this grant in your last month of studies abroad, when you have already taken out a loan to support yourself and have been living on a shoestring budget throughout the entire exchange. What is the use of promising a grant if it is not delivered on time?

And yet the nastiest surprise for students who go on ERASMUS awaits them when they return home. Early last year, The Insiter reported that the University of Malta's Registrar's Office was unfairly deflating grades obtained while on ERASMUS. While the Registrar retains the numeric mark that a Maltese student obtains abroad, this is then converted to an ‘alphabetical' grade according to the Maltese grading system. Grading systems differ from university to university, and while both UK and Maltese universities use a 100-point scale to award grades, a UK ‘A' grade is any mark above 70%, while a UOM ‘A' grade is any mark above 80%. Therefore, when a UK lecturer gives a Maltese student a 70, his intention is to reward that student with an ‘A'. Yet, when this student returns to Malta, his grade is turned to a ‘B'. This essentially means that his grades have been deflated by 10%, dealing a severe blow to that student's average mark, which is then used to decide the classification of his degree. A number of these students end up spending a great deal of their time traipsing from one University office to another to try to get proper recognition for the grades they obtained abroad.

Further complications arise when the student in question attends a university that uses a grading system that differs greatly from the Maltese one. One Maltese student who went on an exchange programme last year was left on tenterhooks for a whole summer, as his Department at the University of Malta was genuinely baffled by the system through which his grades were awarded. He was only informed that he could progress to the next year of his course when the University semester was already underway.

In the run up to this year's European Parliament elections, the European Students Union, of which our Kunsill Studenti Universitarji (KSU) is a member, endorsed a student manifesto urging MEP candidates to lobby for student issues should they be elected, foremost among which are problems related to student mobility and the ERASMUS programme.

Unfortunately, this pressing issue received little to no attention locally, with most of our aspiring MEPs preferring to focus on immigration, hunting, and employment. None of the handful of MEP candidates who made student mobility a cornerstone of their campaign were elected. This is quite ironic as these opportunities were one main reason why we students were urged to vote in favour of EU membership in the first place.

During the last European Parliament elections, Maltese students missed a crucial opportunity to campaign for better harmonisation of the grading systems of ERASMUS-participating universities. We must now learn from our mistake. KSU, the student media, student organisations and student representatives must put their heads together to put student mobility on the national agenda. Failing to do so would be doing our fellow students a huge disservice.

Anna Abela recently completed a Bachelor of Laws and is a former Editor of The Insiter, published by Insite - The Student Media Organisation.