When you take a bunch of students’ union officers and the staff that support them on a study tour around Europe, you do spend the first few visits doing what Jim likes to describe as “look, they call a Twix a Raider!”.
As you disembark the bus that’s had one too many brushes with a low bridge or had to navigate a set of roadworks that weren’t on Google Maps, you’re looking frantically for familiar anchors – lecture theatres, welcome weeks, student societies and social learning spaces – that enable you to situate yourself in what you’re seeing.
As an example, everywhere we went on this year’s Wonkhe SUs study tour around Europe, we were able to derive a strange kind of comfort in the grim familiarity of a student housing crisis. In the UK landlords are blaming ours on increased regulation – but it’s clear that governments funding the transition to mass higher education through international student fees is the real culprit – and clearer still that governments across the continent are starting to realise that a Plan B is required to avoid losing elections and causing mass homelessness.
