Better Not With ERASMUS?
A Gold Star for the Bureaucratic Sisyphus
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| Sisyphys (1548–49) by Titian, Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain |
It's been weeks since the term has ended at the Università degli Studi di Torino, in fact, the summer term has probably started already. My exams are finished, A+ gold star performance. Five months abroad and I have not seen a cent from my Erasmus mobility grant, worth 270 Euros per month. In fact by February I did no longer expect to receive any kind of money and after the powers-that-be in the International Office at my home university assured me that " the Transcript of Records is all we need", I returned home after having lived in a relatively expensive city in in the north of Italy. Of course the Erasmus grant would have helped greatly with the rent or everything necessary for settling in.
Water under the bridge? I think not.
By February 15th, I finally received another e-mail, stating that they had now calculated the exact amount of money I was due to receive. However, a few more forms needed to be filled out, or filled out again like the subvention agreement I had already completed, signed and sent back in August 2015. And the fill-in-the-gap bureaucratic exercises did not end there. Of course there was the one final document the "ATTESTATION DE SÉJOUR ERASMUS", a form I did not have when I left Italy, but needed to be filled out otherwise "werden wir von unserem Recht Gebrauch machen und das Erasmus-Geld zurückfordern" (we will exercise our right to reclaim the Erasmus money). Ironically, now I have five copies of it and another very urgent reminder that sounded slightly threatening, that they need the form otherwise there will be no money. In the meantime my Transcrip of Records had arrived, my mandatory Erasmus-report was finished and sent on to my Erasmus co-ordinator, the obligatory language assessment test done and even the performance review for the Erasmus Team at home and abroad was completed, again with the reminder that I would only receive the "letzten 20% des Eramsus-Geldes" (the last 20% of the Erasmus grant money) when even the last documents have arrived at my home university.
Now it is March and finally the bulk of the money is in my bank account. But after a brief moment of rejoicing, I received another reminder - the Attestation de séjour Erasmus - was still missing. Of course I had informed them already in February about the impossibility of it all, but I had received no answer, only the same generic E-Mail asking me to fill out the form otherwise "werden wir von unserem Recht Gebrauch machen und das Erasmus-Geld zurückfordern" (we will exercise our right to reclaim the Erasmus money).
Is there method in this madness? Grant delays are quite common, not just at German universities. Erasmus students from Italy, Spain, France and Belgium could fill books about the often enormous problems. An article in the Guardian provided some answers:
"Patricia Charro, a student from Spain, is on an exchange at the University of Bologna. She still has no idea when her grant will come in. She says: “This is making it hard for me to strike a balance between just getting by and enjoying my time overseas.”
In France, the problem seems worse – some students at French universities have been told that demand for funding outstrips supply. A French student studying in the University of Bologna, who didn’t want to be named, says she and a friend were told only after they went overseas that there wouldn’t be enough money – and so they wouldn’t receive any funds.
Why are we facing these difficulties when the €15 billion budget for Erasmus+ is reportedly an increase of 40% over the previous system?Communication has broken down somewhere and it’s us – the students who are supposed to benefit from this programme – who are suffering".
Unlike some of my fellow homo Erasmus, I was lucky enough to be able to support myself financially. In fact, that is another thing, that my home university never fails to remind me of: the Erasmus money is just a contribution towards to costs of studying abord. It should never have been and should never be the essential part of your budget.
Full Article in the Guardian:
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