The process for securing an Erasmus or Study Abroad exchange is long and complicated at the best of times – let alone in the middle of a pandemic.
In recent weeks, many Trinity students have attempted to make decisions about a major event in their lives, even as a virus lays waste to even the best-laid plans.
Uncertainty abounds over whether it will be safe to travel by the time such exchanges are due to start – or, indeed, if students will be forbidden from completing the exchange at all, in the event that their host universities cancel inbound exchanges.
Communication from Trinity on exchanges has been sparse so far, even as three other Irish universities have taken the decision to cancel all outbound exchanges for at least one term. College has promised to give clarity on the situation tomorrow, May 29th, but by that stage, many students will have already made decisions about whether they will proceed with their own exchange.
Some host universities have given students the option to defer their exchange to later in the year. But for certain courses, this simply isn’t possible, Isabel Doyle, a law and business student, says. “The problem was in the second semester I have a mandatory law module that I have to take, but we were kind of thinking they might let us take it in fourth year because [of the] unprecedented circumstances and all that. So I was just going to wait, I wasn’t under time pressure or anything.”
I picked out Auckland in transition year, and it had been one of the factors that probably influenced my CAO
Doyle’s host university, the University of Auckland in New Zealand, “emailed being like: ‘We need to know whether you’re cancelling or deferring.’ They were like: ‘We need to know asap’ … I’m not taking the gamble, I’m not gambling missing that mandatory law module so I just said I’d cancel and then like a week later we got an email from the law school saying we could defer that module”.
Jacob Maguire, another law and business student who was due to go to Auckland with Doyle, said that the decision to cancel was a disappointing one: “I picked out Auckland in transition year, and it had been one of the factors that probably influenced my CAO.”
“We had planned to travel and stuff when we were down there”, he said, “and I’d rather not go than go and have restrictions”.
In the absence of clarity from College, students due to go abroad have, in many cases, had to engage in long back-and-forth communications with both College and their host university.
Conell Roe, a BESS student who was due to go on a Study Abroad programme in Hong Kong University, said: “Eventually they told me – this is like, three weeks ago – ‘we’re cancelling all first term exchanges’, and then that means if you’re due for a full year you’re cancelled too.”
“They said you’re not automatically re-applied for the second semester, but if you get your college to renominate you you can do that”, Roe said. “So that email came to me and I kind of had a feeling Trinity wouldn’t know and then I basically started emailing everyone in Trinity I could think of.”
“It’s sort of worrying that Trinity might come out like DCU or UCD and cancel it all on us, and I’ll have put in more work
“I got onto the business co-ordinator [and] the economics co-ordinator … they sent me to Global Relations and then I was talking to them and they were like: ‘Yeah, we had no clue that this happened.’”
Similarly, Muireann Ní Mhurchú, a psychology student, had to reach out to Trinity after the University of Western Australia offered her a deferral on her first-semester exchange.
“We were basically welcome to do the semester online from home if we wanted or we could defer until February of 2021 and they would carry any deposits we made or anything like that”, she said.
“I hadn’t really heard anything from Trinity, I kind of just did things by myself, so once I heard that, I just got in touch with Michael Gormley [the Erasmus and Study Abroad co-ordinator for the School of Psychology] to check if it was okay fro me to do that.”
Ní Mhurchú said that the University of Western Australia was “brilliant”.
“I have to say I cannot fault them at all … I haven’t lost out on any money – or any sleep.”
This week, Niamh Burke, an associate director of partnerships in Trinity’s Global Relations Office, wrote in an email to The University Times that “deliberations are currently ongoing with partner universities, and internally with Schools. The Vice-President for Global Relations will issue an email to the Trinity community regarding Erasmus on Friday 29th of May”.
To be fair to Academic Registry, they were quite good this time round. They gave us plenty of information this time round
Jonathan Murchan, a law and business student who was due to travel to Monash University in Melbourne, was able to secure a deferral of his exchange to the second semester of the academic year.
Now that he has his plans sorted out, he hopes Trinity’s announcement tomorrow won’t change things: “It’s sort of worrying that Trinity might come out like DCU or UCD and cancel it all on us, and I’ll have put in more work and said to Monash that I still plan on going for the second semester, so they’re planning for that. And for me then to say after the fact that my college has cancelled it, it’s just a bit more awkward.”
Ní Mhurchú echoes this sentiment: “I kind of am afraid that they’re going to do a drastic, college-wide ‘everything’s cancelled for the whole year’ like DCU have. I hope they don’t do that.”
While Trinity’s communication in relation to cancelling exchanges may not have been stellar thus far, most students acknowledge that the current circumstances are unlike anything that exchange co-ordinators have seen before.
“My experience with Academic Registry has traditionally been quite frustrating”, Maguire said. “To be fair to them, they were quite good this time round. They gave us plenty of information this time round.”
Roe adds: “I can’t really fault Trinity for anything they’ve done. I mean, it’s’ not their fault that they didn’t get told by Hong Kong about the exchanges being cancelled. That’s kind of on Hong Kong.”
