Universities seek more control over mobility

 Universities seek more control over mobility

Examining claims that the EU’s Erasmus programme has run out of steam and looks at alternatives that would give universities greater control of studies abroad

Europe needs a more structured form of  student mobility if the number of young people studying abroad is to continue growing, according to the League of European Research Universities (LERU). In a report presented in Brussels last month, the group of 21 institutions argued that take-up of the Erasmus student-exchange scheme has peaked and that European Union education funds should now be opened up to other approaches.

European governments want 20% of all students to be internationally mobile by 2020. At present, the main tool for achieving this is the Erasmus programme, but there are signs that this has reached a plateau well short of the target. “At my own university the number of participating students is steady,” said Bart De Moor, vice-rector responsible for international policy at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and co-author of the LERU report. “It fluctuates a little bit over the years, but it is not growing considerably any more.”

The strength of Erasmus is students making the decision to go abroad: they choose where to go and what courses to follow. This makes the programme vulnerable to pressures on the individual, such as financial worries, social ties, lack of awareness of opportunities, and fears that studying abroad may not be recognised towards the final degree.

The more structured approach proposed by the LERU would hand control back to the universities.

One option is ‘networked mobility’, in which five to ten institutions in different countries agree to exchange students on similar courses. Learning is more structured, with some harmonisation of curriculum and a lower risk of problems with credit recognition.

Going further, two or three universities might agree to co-operate in delivering a single curriculum. There are precedents for this in joint master’s and PhD degrees already operating around Europe, including the EU’s Erasmus Mundus programme. In this ‘embedded mobility’, a whole class would rotate from one partner to the next at the same time.

This approach is particularly attractive for the sciences, allowing institutions to share specialist equipment and teach according to local expertise.

However, it has implications for the cost and logistics of mobility. “You will have to provide housing, because you are not dealing with individuals any more, but groups of 20-30 students,” said De Moor.

Even though this structured mobility approach would be more expensive to implement than Erasmus, it would be easier for universities to manage – an advantage for institutions that increasingly resent the administrative burden of the current EU scheme.

“Setting up this type of mobility requires more work than Erasmus, but once it is running I think it is easier, because you know your contacts and interactions with your partner institutes,” said De Moor.

EU support

The LERU’s suggestions have been warmly welcomed by the European Commission and it is likely that some could be taken up during the next education programme.

“There is plenty of scope to do this, because we have some flexibility and we share the same vision,” said Jordi Curell-Gotor, the Commission’s director of higher education and international affairs, following the report’s presentation.

But given the cost implications, he warned that EU funds might extend only to organising the networks. “In order not to raise false expectations, I have to say from the beginning that I am not that convinced that we would be able to fund the actual mobility, or all of the actual mobility.”

Meanwhile, the LERU plans to continue developing the idea. “In the following months we will try to set up a number of pilot projects between LERU universities where we can translate what we have written about,” said Kurt Deketelaere, the organisation’s secretary- general.