Update: Exchange 1st semester 2021-2022

The board has decided to allow physical mobility, bearing in mind the applicable measures Covid-19 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for both courses and internships/research projects within Europe (including the EEA countries, Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland) and also the UK for the first Semester of the Academic Year 2021-2022. Physical mobility to do an internship or (graduation) research project may be considered for destinations outside of Europe if the destination country is classified as safe on EU’s List of Epidemiologically Safe Countries Amid COVID-19.

An overall decision on possibilities for physical exchange during the second semester will be taken before November 1, 2021.

Rather than waiting to see how the pandemic will develop this summer, the University of Amsterdam has cancelled student exchanges for the first semester, hoping that this will create clarity. The decision ensures that students have plenty of time to choose something else.

Driestar University of Applied Sciences is taking the same approach. Until 1 January 2022, its teacher training programmes will only be offering digital exchanges with educational institutions abroad.

Conditional go-aheads

Other institutions are opting for a less definitive approach. The University of Twente, for instance, has given its students (and programmes) the go-ahead to prepare for exchanges in September, as long as they take into account that there might still be restrictions.

Utrecht University is also choosing to greenlight exchanges – conditionally, that is, as it remains uncertain whether students will actually be able to travel abroad. This will only be possible if the travel advisory for their country of choice is either green or yellow.

Green means that no restrictions apply, while yellow means that travellers should remain ‘vigilant’. There are also orange and red travel advisories. Currently, almost the entire world map is orange, which means that only necessary travel is allowed. There are also a number of red countries, for which all travel has been suspended.

Physical exchange

Inge Adriaans, who is closely involved in the recommendation that ESA has drawn up for TU/e’s Executive Board, which is expected to make a decision on the matter today, says that she can’t go into the details of that recommendation, “since the Board still has to make a decision.”

Broadly speaking, she can however say that the recommendation focuses in part on physical exchange – attending courses, following internships and graduating – within Europe, and that the opportunities for following internships or graduation projects outside Europe have also been taken into account. “The travel advices play an important role, naturally, as well as the so-called safelist of countries that was drawn up by the European Commission,” Adriaans says. The decision on this matter is scheduled to be made public after the Ascension holiday via the Executive Board’s corona update.

Two choices

So the educational institutions have two choices: cancel in order to provide clarity to students and programmes, or don’t cancel and risk wasting time and resources.

Most are choosing some variation of the latter. Codarts University for the Arts and Ede Christian University of Applied Sciences have not yet made a definitive decision, while Delft University of Technology is limiting its exchanges to the European Union. VU Amsterdam will base its decision on the travel advisories on 1 June for exchanges outside Europe and 1 July for exchanges within Europe, which includes Turkey.

But what about the students themselves? Do they get a say? “We do believe that student participation councils should have the right to advise on this, but it’s a grey area”, says Dahran Çoban, chair of Dutch National Student Association ISO. “The law is open to interpretation.” This gives institutions leeway to approach the matter as they see fit.

Formal requirement

Either way, scrapping exchanges is a drastic decision. That’s why administrators should involve their students in the decision regardless, Çoban believes, even if there’s no formal requirement to do so.

At the University of Amsterdam, students are now protesting the cancellation of the exchange programmes. They want to know why their university is choosing to scrap exchanges when other institutions are allowing their students to go abroad.