I have an acquaintance with children that grew up thinking they were European and having options for education and later work in Europe, or the UK if they wanted. Their opportunities and perspective are much smaller now. It was a huge change in perspective for them.
Same works the other way. English is a de facto lingua franca. Migrating between different countries within Europe comes with challenges because many countries still stubbornly implicitly require immigrants to know the native language. With the UK in the EU it was the path of least resistance when migration was considered temporary.
Calling people's preference for their own language "stubborn" is a puzzlingly entitled take. Do you expect every country in Europe to change their language to English? If not, how do you propose immigrants be fully functional in a country without speaking the local language?
Entirely agree with you but... Europe not having a common language is one of the things that holds it back from being a stronger competitor against the US and CN. It's just one of the myriad of other things holding EU back.
It is useless to think that we always "have to compete" head to head. We don't have to be bigger than the bull. Frankly the argument is mostly a way to justify EU federalisation and the death of individual countries and cultures for the sake of "uniformisation" like if that was something unavoidable.
"The number of UK students moving abroad for the whole of a degree did not change in the same way – remaining relatively stable over the past decade. This is perhaps unsurprising given that very few UK students study abroad for the entirety of a degree anyway (particularly in Europe), and those that do so are unlikely to have been severely disadvantaged by the financial changes wrought by Brexit: although they now have to pay ‘international’ fees in Europe, these are typically less than the ‘home’ fees they would have paid in the UK." [1]
There is also the issue of speaking a foreign language well enough to follow an university course as they are usually taught in the local language. Same goes for work.
If you were an EU citizen settled in the UK before Brexit then Brexit hasn't changed anything at all.
> From the 2021/22 academic year, EU nationals became subject to the same rules as non-EU citizens. Those include needing to apply for a study visa and pay higher international student tuition fees, without entitlement to government-subsidised loans.
This is key because with Brexit, and the UK leaving Erasmus as well, EU students are indeed charged much higher tuition fees than UK students. Tuition fees are alreay high in England for British students, but for internationa students it can be £30k+ a year...
"The number of UK students moving abroad for the whole of a degree did not change in the same way – remaining relatively stable over the past decade. This is perhaps unsurprising given that very few UK students study abroad for the entirety of a degree anyway (particularly in Europe), and those that do so are unlikely to have been severely disadvantaged by the financial changes wrought by Brexit: although they now have to pay ‘international’ fees in Europe, these are typically less than the ‘home’ fees they would have paid in the UK." [1]
There is also the issue of speaking a foreign language well enough to follow an university course as they are usually taught in the local language. Same goes for work.
[1] https://ukandeu.ac.uk/student-mobility-post-brexit/
> From the 2021/22 academic year, EU nationals became subject to the same rules as non-EU citizens. Those include needing to apply for a study visa and pay higher international student tuition fees, without entitlement to government-subsidised loans.
This is key because with Brexit, and the UK leaving Erasmus as well, EU students are indeed charged much higher tuition fees than UK students. Tuition fees are alreay high in England for British students, but for internationa students it can be £30k+ a year...