A ¡°gold rush¡± for funding linked to the Turing scheme has resulted in?the growth of?¡°unscrupulous¡± third-party providers in the student mobility market, it has been warned.

Despite the relative lack of demand, the post-Brexit programme,?which replaced Erasmus+?in finding students placements abroad, has led to ¡°significant change¡± in the UK¡¯s mobility infrastructure, according to Rachel Brooks, professor of higher education at the University of Oxford.

Speaking at a lecture organised by Oxford¡¯s Department of Education, she said that?the ¡°perceived inadequacies¡± of Turing had resulted in international student mobility?no longer being the preserve of universities.

Under Erasmus+,?universities were not permitted to pay third parties, either directly or indirectly via students, for short-term?stays, but they can under Turing. As a result, placements have increasingly been ¡°outsourced¡± to international university networks and external providers that offer opportunities more similar to ¡°gap-year opportunities¡± than a traditional term studying abroad.

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¡°Instead of something that¡¯s focused on studying, it¡¯s much more about volunteering and exciting travel,¡± said Brooks. ¡°Many of these organisations promote themselves as facilitating travel to exciting locations in the world.¡±

These companies have allowed the sector to resolve ¡°policy blockages¡± and are effective in enabling universities to meet their widening participation targets, she added.

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But Brooks, who is also president of the British Sociological Association, warned that funding through the Turing scheme has allowed firms to ¡°target the higher education market¡± in ways that were not possible before and raised some ¡°ethical questions¡±.

¡°There was a real sense that these were entrepreneurs who had really taken advantage of what they saw as a moment when new money was coming to the system that they could take advantage of.

¡°These providers themselves told me about quite a lot of unscrupulous practices, as they described them, where other providers that had less of an ethical commitment to good forms of volunteering had entered the market making the most of what they call the gold rush of Turing money.¡±

The minimum duration for?placements under the Turing scheme?was recently reduced to 14 days for the 2025-26 academic year.

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Brooks¡¯ research into partnerships between dozens of top universities and external providers found that many of the programmes offer ¡°very little educational content¡± with no assessment of what students have learned.?This raises ¡°significant questions¡± around whether taxpayer money should be going towards these activities, she said.

Brooks added the rise of these firms can be seen as an ¡°unintended consequence¡± of government action, adding: ¡°They¡¯ve had very little public discussion and it might be something that the government isn¡¯t even aware of.¡±

In addition, Brooks said there are ethical issues associated with the ¡°emerging hierarchy of mobility opportunities¡±.

¡°Typically, employers and others value longer-term types of mobility where students have longer in an overseas location to develop their intercultural skills, their language skills etc.

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¡°[Studies] have suggested that when you get mass short-term international mobility, you see a hierarchy emerging of mobility opportunities where students from lower-income backgrounds with less cultural capital typically take up forms of mobility that are less valued in the labour market.¡±

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com