The mental bloc about going east

The British seem reluctant to study in Eastern and Central Europe. Vittoria D'Alessio tries to unravel the mystery.

If your lip curls in horror at the idea of languishing in bourgeois Paris or hackneyed Madrid for part of your PhD course, the chance of a year at a university in Kazakhstan with a walletful of crisp Ecus may be the very thing to put the smile back on your face.

Call it Europe's best kept secret but since 1990 the European Union has offered an almost boundless range of attractive "travel" propositions under the umbrella of Tempus, rarely exploited by British PhD students.

Tempus (trans-European co-operation scheme for higher education) forms part of the European Union's overall assistance for the social and economic restructuring of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the states newly independent from the former Soviet Union, and Mongolia (known collectively as "partner states"). More specifically, it seeks to develop and restructure the higher education system in partner states.

Individual PhD students in all EU countries can apply to Tempus. Those who are accepted receive a grant which supposedly covers all costs from travel and living expenses to new research equipment and text books. The visit can last for one week, one month or four months.

But applications will only be considered if the proposed project complies with tight guidelines and yearly priorities set down by each partner state. In short, the outcome of every project must first and foremost offer tangible benefits to the host university.

Catherine Cieczki, information officer at the Tempus headquarters in Turin, Italy, says: "When we first started the programme, partner states welcomed everything, but now their requirements are becoming stricter. They are looking for subjects that are more relevant for European integration - for example, European law, environment and languages."

Tempus also now stipulates that PhD students must have been doing some teaching at their United Kingdom universities.

UK students looking to take part in a more structured approach to Eastern and Central European aid could consider joining a UK university that formally participates in a Phare or Tacis programme (spinoffs of Tempus).

Phare projects are aimed specifically at Central and Eastern European countries, from the Baltic states to Albania, while Tacis is concerned exclusively with the social and economic redevelopment of the former Soviet Union group countries and Mongolia.

Projects funded by Phare and Tacis are classified as Joint European Projects and span three years. They embrace universities from a number of EU countries and exchange students are funded by a central kitty of up to Ecu450,000 (Pounds 367,347) per project.

Ladislav Janski, science professor at Charles University in Prague, has received two PhD students from Manchester University as part of a JEP to establish an International PhD school in biomedicine and human ecology in the Czech Republic.

He has sent six students to Manchester in exchange and is disappointed by the paucity of British students applying to work in his laboratories.

"Those who have come have been very happy, they have had plenty of money and our research facilities are quite good, but the problem is that the interest among English students seems to be quite small," he said.

"One reason is that they don't want to interrupt their regular stipend in England for a period of three to 12 months. When they come here, they work on something related to their main PhD subject but it is normally not exactly the same subject. Maybe they resent this interruption.

"We are trying to speak to tutors in EU countries to see if we can coordinate subjects better."

Despite links with no fewer than 14 UK institutions of higher education, Andr s Patk"s, professor at the Lor nt Eotvos University in Puskin, Hungary, has not received a single UK applicant for a JEP which aims to boost the physics department in Budapest.

He said: "We have had many students from Germany and Greece. They come very well-informed about Hungary and become well-integrated. Maybe English students think that to go to a non-English speaking environment will slow down their work. But the language of our course is English and the personal tutorials are all in English."

John Dore, reader in physics at Kent University in Canterbury and a UK coordinator for Tempus, agrees that there is an imbalance in the flow of students in and out of the UK. Last year, for example, 55 physics students from continental Europe (including 20 from Eastern and Central Europe) took temporary placements in UK universities, while only a handful of UK students took advantage of similar travel opportunities.

Dr Dore thinks language is a major obstacle. Ironically, most overseas courses are conducted in English. His son Tony decided to break from British protocol, however, and after completing a PhD in atmospheric physics at UMIST in 1990, he took a job at the University of Warsaw, Institute of Geophysics, making his arrangements independently of Tempus. He ended up staying for nearly three years.

"I was keen to work abroad but was looking for somewhere a bit different from the usual destinations - ie Western Europe and the United States," he said. "My head of department at UMIST had a contact at Warsaw." During his first year in Poland, Dr Dore was on staff at the University of Warsaw. "This was poorly paid so I probably wouldn't have stopped for a second year in those circumstances.

"I had a Royal Society fellowship for the second year and a half. This is part of an agreement between the Royal Society and the Polish Academy of Sciences under the European Science Exchange Programme. This was well paid and included some travel expenses."

Dr Dore's impressions of Poland's academic facilities were mixed: "Warsaw University has certain specialist areas in which it is very strong though I heard stories from colleagues in other departments about staff who were unmotivated and not supporting their students sufficiently in their studies. Computing facilities were adequate but had to be shared. Inevitably, finances were much more restricted than in the West.

"The staff were very well-trained - in fact they probably had a somewhat better grounding in the the fundamentals of their specialist areas than their British counterparts. Many of them had worked abroad previously but there was clearly a lack of motivation concerning their work as a result of low pay."

Dr Dore blames the dearth of British students in Central and Eastern Europe on misplaced prejudices. "I think many people still consider [it] to be dangerous, backwards and academically inferior to the West," he said. "I disagree."

Information on Tempus, Phare and Tacis can be obtained from: 012-7612 or on the Internet: WWW:http://www.etf.it

Details of the European Science Exchange Programme can be obtained from Jane Stone at the Royal Society, 0171 839 5561.