ReportageIn Sheffield, the campus is deserted and the lecture halls are silent. Between the pandemic, the effects of Brexit and the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the Erasmus exchange system, Sheffield and its competitors are going through a period of unprecedented crisis.
Voluble and available, the young student takes advantage of her only daily outing allowed during this endless English confinement. in Sheffield, in the center-east of the country, Orla Katz Webb-Lamb, 20, with wavy hair and round cheeks, awaits us near her neat pavilion, shared with other students. Rental from individuals, “Much cheaper than the rooms at the university”. This late February afternoon, Orla is delighted to be walking. “In London, I was jogging, here it’s too hard, it climbs a lot”, she breathes. The former British steel capital does indeed resemble a mountain metropolis, with its buildings set up on the side of damn steep hills.
A few minutes from her accommodation, Orla begins the visit of the campus. An astonishing and disparate collection of buildings, some facades from the end of the 19th centurye century, many brand new laboratories, all dominated by the overwhelming Arts Tower, built in 1966.
A student in politics, French and Spanish, she quickly confides her anxieties. After a year of distance learning (which may resume face-to-face after Easter, but nothing is certain), she is worried about her level: “I don’t practice French enough, online courses do not replace conversations at all. ” She also fears being confronted, once graduating, with a much harsher job market.
However, Orla chose this city for the excellence of its university. Sheffield University ranked 16th most successful campus in UK in 2021, according to the QS World University ranking. It is of course less famous than Cambrige, Oxford or Imperial College London, but, with nearly 30,000 students and six Nobel Prize winners, this “red brick university”, founded at the beginning of the 20th century.e century, is part of the prestigious Russell Group, a network of some twenty British universities recognized for their scientific research.
A substitution program, the Turing Scheme
Managed like private companies even if they have the status of charitable associations, these institutions have become international in the last ten years, since the British state has almost stopped funding higher education.
Most of their income comes from tuition fees and donations. The Russell Group campuses have 34% of international students, who inject 10 billion pounds (11.7 billion euros) per year into the country’s economy. But, under the combined effect of Covid-19, Brexit and the abandonment of Erasmus by the government of conservative Boris Johnson, these prestigious and opulent establishments have entered an unprecedented zone of turbulence.
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