Abandoned Abroad?
With Oxford University rejoicing in the knowledge that undergraduate Richard Low is alive and well following the Moscow hostage tragedy, attention has been drawn to safety implications of the 'year abroad' scheme that forms an integral part of the degrees of many Oxford students.
Low, a student of Modern Languages at LMH, was spending his third year abroad in Moscow, thus fulfilling the requirement of the four-year degree that students should spend a total of 32 weeks in a country where their chosen language is spoken.
Every year, hundreds of students venture forth to more exotic climes, whether just hopping across the Channel to France or braving the long haul to Japan or to South America. The majority of such students are those following a four-year BA in Modern Languages or Oriental Studies, with the odd few studying Law with Law Studies in Europe.
The organisation of the years abroad is, in most cases, left entirely to the students, with support offered by tutors and departments to varying degrees. While unforeseen dangers are not something Oxford can be expected to safeguard its protégés from, the impression of disparities between faculties and lack of formal strict guidelines has perturbed prospective students.
For those desiring to spend their year in a Francophone country, for example, an information session is run by the sub-faculty, but attendance is not compulsory and beyond this, students are reliant for further help on their personal tutor. French students are given four possible activities to pursue; working abroad, studying at a university or a university language centre in a foreign country or working as an 'assistant' in the teaching of English.
Many French students fall back on the latter, as it is one of the easier to organise, as it does not rely on personal or one's tutor's contacts. Both Richard Hanson and Daniel Nivern, now fourth-year linguists at Keble, spent their years abroad working as 'assistants' in France. Hanson told the OxStu: "It was a very rewarding experience for me, but Oxford doesn't properly publicise all the available options. In applying for an assistantship, you apply to a region not a town, which means you can end up in the middle of nowhere."
'Year abroad' students have also expressed concern at a low level of personal contact with their tutor. Daniel Nivern remarked: "Unlike other universities where your personal tutor may come and visit you, it was up to me to make contact with my tutor." Dr Toby Garfitt, Senior Tutor in Modern Languages at Magdalen, has responded by saying that "the ubiquity of e-mail has now made regular contact fairly straightforward."
Other students, whilst in touch with their Oxford tutors, have noted a lack of in-country support. Daniel Low, an Arabist at Pembroke, is currently studying at the Tunis Institute for Modern Languages in Tunisia with several other Oxonians. He has stated "We are very much left to our own devices. If we face any problems, our Oxford tutors could probably not help anyway and the tutors at the Institute have no responsibility for our pastoral care." Low also had to wait until he was in the country before he could organise accommodation and had to stay in a hotel until he found somewhere to live.
A lack of a central body to organise and oversee the 'year abroad' is a cause for consternation, with an over-reliance on students' personal tutors. However, changes have been proposed, as outlined by Dr Garfitt who is especially involved with the organisation of this all-important period of study abroad. "It is currently strongly recommended that a student submit two substantial essays during their year abroad. These requirements will be stepped up and proposals are currently being discussed according to which every student will be required to create, with their tutor, a plan of work to be carried out during the year abroad. From next year, a central body will hold these agreed plans of work and thus responsible for being aware of the academic situation of the student."
Dr Garfitt too admits to the difficulties faced by the university in taking cross-collegiate responsibility for all 'year abroad' students, saying: "With regard to personal well-being however, it would not be realistic to have a single central figure with full pastoral oversight of the nearly 300 students that go abroad every year."
Oli Ross, a student of English and Spanish at Magdalen, who has recently returned from a year in Salamanca, highlights the dearth of oral teaching at Oxford in the first two years of the language course as a real problem, having witnessed other students struggling with the spoken language. "Perhaps it would have been a good idea to introduce compulsory Spanish oral classes, at least in the first two years of study, especially for those who baulked at the prospect of spending a year in a country whose language they had hardly spoken since leaving school."
The ERASMUS exchange programme attracts surprisingly low participation at Oxford; only 54 Oxonians travelled abroad with ERASMUS in 2000, a distinctly low number when contrasted with the 229 ERASMUS students from Nottingham or the 232 from Bristol.
Cecilia Da Forno, studying German and Philosophy at St. Peter's, has just returned from a "successful" year as an ERASMUS student at Bonn University. "I think that the reason no more Oxford students do it is because it is not so widely-publicised as an option for the year abroad."
Beverly Potts, ERASMUS co-ordinator for the University told the OxStu: "I would like to see more Oxford students taking part in the scheme. We currently receive more students than we send under the programme and we would like to see these numbers balanced through increased participation by Oxford students."
It is often necessary to cast a sceptical eye over cases of students bemoaning the lack of formal guidelines for pastoral care and reliance on the luck of the personal tutor lottery. While spending twelve months immersing themselves in an academic institution in an alien culture may be a daunting prospect, should it not be at least to some extent the initiative of the student to explore the plethora of options available? Obviously there are marked differences between the countries in question; I imagine that a student departing for a year in Syria would require slightly more reassurance that their welfare was being overseen back in Blighty, than their counterpart sojourning the Spanish costas. However it is worth remembering that the pre-university gap year student departs for the other side of the globe without this safety net. As Dr Garfitt commented, there is precious little that Oxford can do once a student has departed the dreaming spires, and if the new centralised policy involves a rigorous timetable of academic work to be regularly shipped back, how much intervention in our year out plans do we really want?
31st Oct 2002