Magdeburg / Halle (dpa / sa) – The corona pandemic not only orders students to read lectures on the screen and restrict contact with fellow students – it also prevents young people from planned semesters abroad. However, despite all the adversities, some students go far away, as a survey by the German Press Agency shows. There is little demand for digital changes, in which one participates from home in the online offers of a university abroad. “Pure virtual semesters abroad are not popular, as students strive to go abroad in order to have this special experience on site,” said the University of Halle.
At the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, around 200 students per year completed a semester abroad or a longer study stay abroad before the pandemic, it said. The young people went to around 40 different countries. The top 3 were Spain, Finland and Poland. Many stays are now planned, but often canceled shortly beforehand. There are currently only about 40 mobile students.
The other students could not drive due to the increased corona numbers or the unworkable quarantine regulations. Sometimes there are also no entry options. In some cases, there are obligations to take expensive tests or the teaching only takes place online in the target country. In some courses such as European Studies and Cultural Engineering, this delayed degrees.
Before the pandemic, an average of 250 students per semester at the Martin Luther University Halle were on leave due to a stay abroad, as the university announced. It was regularly around 1.25 percent of the 20,000 students. Spain, Italy and Norway were popular in the European Erasmus program, the USA, Russia and Israel in the promos program of the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD. With the summer semester 2020 the numbers collapsed, in the Erasmus program 23 of 98 registered stays abroad were canceled or broken off. In the following winter semester 72 out of 137, in the summer semester 2021 then 73 out of 105.
According to the universities, stays abroad can also be planned at the moment. “A stay abroad even has to be planned well in advance,” said Halle. “Students have to start organizing about a year in advance just to be able to meet the various application deadlines. Since the beginning of the year there have been significantly more students who have started this planning and are aiming for a stay abroad from the middle of 2021.”
According to the Harz University of Applied Sciences, there is “very great interest” in stays abroad for the summer semester 2021. The number of applicants is high. Unfortunately, there are ultimately very many resignations due to the prevailing uncertainty. Of the 62 planned stays abroad, half were ultimately started in the summer semester. Over the past few years, an average of around 120 students have completed a one or two-semester study abroad at the university. The proportion of the total number of students was four to five percent, as announced by the university in Wernigerode.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210320-99-898256 / 3
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