Join us in our campaign for the Full Mobility of Higher Education and Research Staff and Students in Europe!!

Students and teachers have a right to be mobile. Students and teachers who want to spend a period of time abroad should be able to do so across the European continent without obstacles. ESU and EI want equal chances and equal access to knowledge and education for all, based on personal interest and capacity, including academic mobility.

However, mobility for all students and staff is far from being a reality in Europe today. After many years of discussion and reforms, students and higher education personnel are staying at home, because of the many barriers to mobility. In order to increase student and staff mobility, the needs of students and staff themselves must be taken into account.

Therefore it is time to act!

ESU and EI have launched this campaign to ensure that students and teacher voices are heard across Europe.  Our campaign aims at bringing the issues that teachers and students face when going abroad to study; teach or research to the centre of political debate. We want to see mobility becoming a reality and not only a proclaimed goal. Read more.

A High Level Expert Forum on Mobility was set up in December 2007 by the European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Ján Figel', to strengthen and promote the mobility of young people in the 21st century in the European Union. The Expert Forum brings together 11 mobility experts from 10 EU Member States covering such wide-ranging fields as higher education, youth, vocational training, employment, culture and music.

The High Level Expert Forum released their report “Making Learning Mobility an Opportunity for All” on the 10th of July. The report outlines concrete goals for mobility for young people. The Forum wants that by 2020 50 % of all young people between 16-29 should have “be offered the opportunity to engage in some form of cross-border mobility at some point”. This should be reached by having 6% of all university students mobile each year, 3.5% of trainees in vocational education and training, 0.5% of secondary school students and just over 1% of young people engaging in a mobility-based voluntary action.

The group also focuses on the importance to mainstream mobility into all relevant EU policies, increase focus on language training in preparation for mobility periods and strengthening the present EU mobility programmes.
It can be noted that actions are mainly directed at learners in academic and vocational courses and at young people.

Access the full report here.

EU press releases here and here.

On the 10th of July the European Commission released this year’s report on the progress towards the Lisbon strategy goals. Parts of this report was devoted to mobility of students.

As a background to its work with student mobility the Commission presented the various charters concerning mobility that have been adopted over the last years. In order to assure high quality mobility it proposed the Erasmus University Charter and the Erasmus Student Charter in 2003. Furthermore the Commission has written a proposal for a Recommendation to the European Parliament and Council on a European Quality Charter for Mobility. The Charter was adopted in the end of 2006.
 
In the report the Commission notes that there are not enough national strategies on mobility and that the main source of support for mobility still is the EU programmes. It also comments that countries tend to promote the mobility of incoming students, rather than the mobility of outgoing students. The Commission is also aware of and concerned about that disincentives to mobility such as legal impediments, under-funding and problems with recognition persists. It calls for better use of ECTS, Diploma Supplement and the Bologna cycle structure.

Moreover the Commission is concerned that the EU might attract and retain fewer talented minds due to these problems. In order to increase the attractiveness of the EU as a study destination for students from third countries or “other world regions” the ERASMUS Mundus programme was launched in 2006. There are no further comments on how ERASMUS Mundus has succeeded so far.

Download the full report here .