In 2022, the Erasmus+ programme, the European Union’s most successful and recognised programme and arguably the world’s most famous educational programme, celebrates its 35 anniversary. European politicians left right and centre of the political spectrum have energetically highlighted the programme’s successes and commit to boost it further.

French President Emmanuel Macron posted a remarkable video address on the anniversary day of the programme. Erasmus+ has become synonymous with learning mobility, with more than 50% of young Europeans declaring that they know the programme.

The social recognition of Erasmus+ helps to increase the overall societal appreciation for learning mobility as an important part of the educational pathway of students. In the midst of the pandemic, there were certain voices claiming that student mobility will not get back to normal and that online formats should become more prevalent.

The first year of the Erasmus+ programme 2021-2027 brought a rocky re-start for learning mobility after the academic year 2019/2020, with thousands of students facing considerable confusion due to the delayed approval of the new Erasmus+ regulation. This year, most higher education Institutions across Europe are reporting record numbers of outgoing and incoming mobile students. The increased opportunities in the new Erasmus+ programme 2021-2027, with almost double the budget of its predecessor, should help to bring learning mobility closer to more than 10 million young European in the next few years.

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No Time for Complacency

As Erasmus+ and student mobility become more socially recognised, improving access to these opportunities and ensuring quality experiences for students become even more important. Student mobility needs to bring benefits to the whole student population and to hosting communities, fostering internationalisation at home. With the climate crisis raging, mobility opportunities should also become more sustainable without becoming more elitist, building on its transformative power to help students to develop sustainable habits and green skills.

Erasmus+ is a key component of the so-called Brussels effect, a theory that explains how the EU defines global standards on a number of issues through its policies and programmes. In the field of student exchange, Erasmus is taken as a reference to build new mobility programmes within and without Europe. Even after leaving Erasmus. Switzerland and the UK have developed certain mobility programmes that replicate the basic structures of Erasmus.

After the first year of implementation of the new programme, the Commission has launched an evaluation process that combines the final evaluation of the previous Erasmus+ 2014 2020, and the mid-term evaluation of the new programme. In order to contribute to this process, the Erasmus Student Network has put together a comprehensive analysis of both programmes, compiling the main evidence from our research during the last 8 years.

The document builds on our experience and the work on the ground of our 15.000 volunteers who support Erasmus students every day, and it offers a broad picture of the current state of international student mobility in Europe. In this article, we will share the main findings of our latest research outputs, with reflections on what should be the way forward for student mobility in Europe and beyond.

Satisfaction of Students: Progress and Challenges Ahead

The findings of our latest ESN Survey, which will be released soon, show that students report more satisfaction with the services offered by host institutions compared to home institutions and that challenges remain with certain services such as accommodation, local integration or reintegration activities. However, the overall level of satisfaction is remarkable considering all the challenges brought by the pandemic.

Indeed, overall satisfaction shows improvements from previous editions of the ESN Survey that covered services provision. This proves that the reinforced quality framework introduced through the changes in the Erasmus Charter for Higher Education have paid off. For example, in 2016, 11.2% of students were dissatisfied by services provided by host institutions, while only 2.05% report the same dissatisfaction in the current edition.

The percentage of students satisfied or very satisfied has risen accordingly – to 39.19% and 43.51% in 2021 from 31.3% and 31.7% in 2016. Overall, 82.70% of students are satisfied or very satisfied with services provided by the host institution.

However, the difference between home and host institutions is significant – only 67.25% are satisfied or very satisfied with services at the home institution, with 14.32% dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with home institution services.‍

Additionally, the service that shows the highest levels of dissatisfaction – reintegration activities, where 22.95% of respondents registered dissatisfaction and 38.11% “not applicable” answers – follows the trends of previous ESN Surveys, such as the 2016 edition. The results on the involvement in alumni communities upon return are rather close to the overall result on reintegration activities.

Meanwhile, 17.77% of respondents were dissatisfied with accommodation support, and 16.72% of respondents were dissatisfied with accommodation provision, highlighting the prevalent issues with accommodation for mobile international students. The current raise in accommodation prices that we are seeing across Europe is posing tremendous challenges for students, and it requires specific policy responses from Higher Education Institutions and regional authorities.

Through the HouseErasmus+ project, ESN put together a number of recommendations that can make a difference in improving access to quality student accommodation. The HOME project is building on the results of that project with the creation of tools, such as quality labels, that can support international students.

Dissatisfaction with local integration activities is also very high – 17.51% of respondents were dissatisfied by this. A similar percentage (16%) is dissatisfied with different mentoring support services.Many of these challenges can be approached in a synergistic manner. An alumni involvement strategy in collaboration with student and alumni organisations can help improve local integration. Better pre*departure support. Including intercultural activities and contact with incoming students, can make the challenging application process easier and more amusing.

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Mobility for All

The findings of our Social Inclusion and Engagement in Mobility research report show a grim picture in terms of the current situation students from different backgrounds face with regards to accessing mobility opportunities. The survey gathered more than 12.000 answers from mobile and non-mobile respondents, which combined with focus groups and study visits, and gives us a very complete image of the existing challenges.

It will not come as a surprise that financial barriers remain the biggest barrier for mobile and non-mobile students alike. When we think about financial barriers, insufficient grants will easily come to mind, and rightly so: in 2020, the average Erasmus+ monthly grant was 374 euros, but 67% of the students reported living costs higher than 501 euros. If applied extensively, the fewer opportunities of top-ups that the new programme includes can drastically improve the situation of thousands of students.

Unfortunately, financial pressures are likely to worsen with the inflationary spiral, so it is key to peg mobility scholarships to inflation if we don’t want these opportunities to become even more elitist. ESN encourages Higher Education Institutions, National Authorities and European Institutions to take this measure swiftly to support mobile students.

But the amount of money is not the only limiting factor: the timing in which students receive their grants is equally important, since many of them simply do not have the resources to pay their mobility expenses, such as transportation or the first rents, up front.

More than 82% of mobile students pointed at these aspects as the main barrier to mobility they faced, and the qualitative part of the research clearly showed the urgency of this issue. The data from the ESN Survey 2021 shows that almost a third of students receive their grants later than one month after the beginning of their mobilities, with South European countries such as Spain, France and Italy having the biggest percentage of late payments.

There is no proof that paying mobility scholarships before the beginning of the semester will lead to fraud, and higher education institutions can put measures in place to make sure this does not happen. This is the way the Erasmus Student Network has been advocating for an overhaul of the grant agreements that students and Universities sign, introducing a clause that ensures that students will receive their grants before the actual start of their mobilities.

Ready for Recognition

Bureaucracy and recognition continue to be the main problems affecting almost every aspect of the Erasmus experience, affecting both the access, the experience itself, and the reintegration process. Data from the ESN Survey 2021 shows that recognition and problems with the courses remain among the biggest problems for students, and the SIEM research report shows that problems related to lack of flexibility affect students from fewer opportunities backgrounds more directly.

The ECHE monitoring should become more strict over the new cycle to ensure recognition procedures are implemented, including more qualitative components to get a better understanding of the experiences of students.

Participation in new ambitious collaborative programmes such as European University Alliances should be linked more closely to levels of automatic recognition that are near 100%, in order to reinforce the institutional importance of these processes. The programme should also reinforce the dissemination component of how Bologna tools work and the whole overview of the process.

‍ Local Integration and Interaction with Local Communities

Fostering meaningful interactions with local students and local communities more broadly can increase the impact of mobility experiences beyond participants, improving internationalisation at home, and breaking the mobility bubble. However, proper guidance and support are needed to ensure that those interactions take place. Interaction leads to better integration and tends to result in greater satisfaction.

When asked about their integration in the local community, 16.19% of the participants declared that they were fully integrated, 36.63% integrated, 29.24% neutral, 13.73% not integrated and 3.43% totally not integrated.

Participation in organised activities and local organisations of different kinds is one of the most effective ways to enable those interactions. Our data tells us that 16.64% of all respondents joined a local sporting club/team, 13.81% joined a local student/youth association, 7.48% volunteered in the local community, 5,01% found a part-time job, 5.01% joined an art/music/drama club, 4.33% joined the local student union/council and 54.67% did not do any of these activities.

These results show that local integration remains a challenge and that more should be done to increase the interaction with local communities. ESN believes that a huge potential lies in volunteering initiatives involving international students, which can help them draw connections between societal challenges and local realities. The SocialErasmus+ project has proposed several ideas to increase the implementation of these initiatives among higher education institutions.

Informal learning should acquire a more important role in the programme, being recognised in the learning agreements of students as key learning outcomes of the mobility experience. Just like in the youth sector, the Youthpass is used to foster reflection on the learning process, and the tools within Erasmus+ Higher Education should also be adapted to incorporate the different forms of learning and properly capture the experience of the students.

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Conclusion: an opportunity to continue improving learning mobility

Despite the different challenges presented above, learning mobility continues to have a bright future ahead. More young people than ever want to experience these opportunities, and social and political recognition of their importance continues to increase. However, there is no time for complacency. In a divided and fragmented world, building bridges between people and empowering the future generations to create a better world is simply too important to be overlooked.

With learning mobility, we have an easy and tangible way to help young people develop skills, foster solidarity and create an international public sphere that helps us to navigate the many challenges facing our world. Instead of taking it for granted, let’s join forces to continue improving it.