British students may be excluded from Erasmus after Brexit

Given that language courses have perfectly respectable employment rates, this is a pretty silly thing to say. Being fluent in three languages is very valuable and you're forgetting two important points: firstly, language degrees are not just about the language, they generally offer modules in a whole range of other aspects of the other country like history, economics, politics and culture. Secondly, since most professional jobs don't require specific degrees anyway, most language graduates (as with most graduates) will end up going into a career that isn't directly related to their undergraduate degree where the transferable skills rather than the actual subject content is most important. And language degrees are regarding as being challenging.

I've just realised that if I gave an antagonistic response to this I'd be trading insults with an 18 year old on the internet. This isn't something I particularly want to do, so I'll restrict myself to suggesting that you might have misinterpreted my response to your comment about my peers if you think I was bragging about my intelligence, and that perhaps it would be better not to take up more space in the thread with this.

Well no. You said the main benefit of degrees is transferable skills not the content, so I am simply applying your logic. How does a year abroad in another country enhance your transferable skills beyond what you can get simply by doing a degree?

The mere fact you want to spend a year abroad does not make it useful.

If we do lose Erasmus then students will have to take out more loans to pay for their year abroad. Language degrees will become more expensive relative to other subjects and fewer people will choose to study them at university. This matters, our economy needs foreign language speakers.



The purpose of a language degree is to learn to speak that language. Whether or not a graduate uses their language skills later in life is irrelevant. In order to properly learn a language it is necessary to spend time abroad practicing with native speakers. Immersion is the key to language learning. Surely you don't disagree?

I'm really not in a position to comment on the necessity or not of the year abroad - I dropped languages as soon as I could at school. I have to say it should be possible in theory to manage without - history students don't have tardis based field trips.

My real point was that if you follow the logic of the post I quoted it definitely renders the year pointless.