Student mobility – a positive factor for the EU 

According to the European Union, student and teacher mobility is an important factor for growth and employment. Indeed, on the one hand it facilitates the dissemination of knowledge and, on the other hand, people who have undertaken part of their studies abroad are more likely to take advantage of an increasingly internationalised labour market. The Commission recently published a working paper revealing the relatively high mobility of students from the New Member States (NMS), who are particularly active within Erasmus, a European programme designed to encourage the mobility of professors, researchers and students. Three indicators enable us to evaluate the progress made in the field of mobility. 

The first indicator is the European countries’ degree of openness to foreign students: during the 2001/02 academic year, there were 894,000 foreign students in Europe, accounting for 5.5% of the total student population. Thus, the EU-25 ranks ahead of the United States (3.7%) and Japan (1.9%). But this average conceals important disparities between countries. All the NMS, in particular, registered figures below the European average, except for Cyprus. The lowest rates are reached in Estonia (0.7%), Poland (0.4%) and Lithuania (0.5%). Overall, 63.2% of the foreign students in the EU-25 originate from countries outside Europe. The highest rates (> to 80%) are to be found in Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovenia, as well as France and Portugal.

The second indicator enables us to appreciate the degree of mobility of each country’s students: in 2001/02, 2.7% of European students pursued studies outside their country of origin. Six NMS are above the EU-25 average: Estonia (5.6%), Latvia (2.8%), Lithuania (3.6%), Slovakia (6.9%), Malta (13.3%) and Cyprus (56.3%). Conversely, mobility is low in Poland (1.2%). On the whole, 78% of these students chose another European country and this percentage is above 50% in all the countries except Estonia (50%) and Latvia (43%). Overall, the EU-25 receives 60,000 more students than it sends abroad. Conversely, the NMS (except Hungary and the Czech Republic) send significantly more students abroad than they receive. 

The third indicator relies on data from the Erasmus programme, in which the number of participants is progressing regularly (+9.4% in 2003/04 and +7.4% the previous year). Every year, this programme involves approximately 0.8% of the European students (or, approximately 35% of the intra European flows of students). The EU aims to reach a level of 2% per year, so as to include 10% of the total EU students if considered as a “5-year class”. The NMS have been taking part in Erasmus since 1998/99. Approximately 0.5% of the student population of the NMS is involved. However, the number of participants has increased very rapidly over the past two years (+16% and +18%). In 2003/04, 15,141 students benefited from this programme (i.e. 11% of the total from the EU-25), Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic making up 78% of the NMS total. In parallel, the universities of the NMS accommodated appreciably less students (4,607, or 3.4% of the EU-25 total). The same three countries accommodated approximately half. 

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