Political and Individual Rationales of Student Mobility: a case-study of ERASMUS and a French regional scheme for studies abroad

The aim of this article is to analyse political rationales for promoting student mobility in Europe and discuss these in the light of individual experiences of mobile students. Since the creation of the ERASMUS programme in 1987, student mobility in Europe has been the subject of unusual political promotion. More recently, in the context of the Bologna process, the goal of increasing student mobility has been reaffirmed by various higher education actors. Student mobility is thought to be both a component of the European Higher Education Area and one of its outcomes. Beyond this apparent widespread acceptance, we examine, on the one hand, underlying legitimating ideas and rationales that accompanied the institutionalisation of student mobility by the European Commission and a regional French authority. We also discuss the extent to which drives for mobility and outcomes at the individual student level are in line with the political perceptions and expectations of the above‐mentioned institutional actors.     

新自由主义与民族保守主义的钟摆交替:欧美国家国际学生流动政策的逻辑与演变

国际学生在一国发展中的战略地位毋庸置疑。在国际学生的招收和使用上,国家和政府不是被动的接收者,政府在国际学生的招收和使用方面扮演重要的建构性角色。通过梳理和解读国际学生流动政策和措施,文章进一步厘清了21世纪以来欧美发达国家国际学生流动政策背后的新自由主义和民族保守主义逻辑。欧美发达国家一方面意识到争夺国际学生对于在"全球人才竞赛"中增强国家竞争优势至关重要;另一方面为照顾本国日益消极的舆论和选民日益高涨的民族主义情绪,严格缩紧国际学生的移民签证。在不同阶段或者不同执政党领导时期,国际学生流动政策呈现出以国家利益为轴心,在新自由主义与民族保守主义之间来回摇摆的演变态势。如何在激烈的"全球人才竞赛"中保持优势与照顾到更加民族主义的国内舆论之间保持平衡,成为欧美国家国际学生流动政策的重点和难点。     

STUDENT MOBILITY IN THE EUROPE REGION: A STATISTICAL EVALUATION

Based on data taken from the Unesco Statistical Yearbook (1987), supplemented, for several countries, with data obtained from the Liaison Officers of CEPES or from other available sources, the article examines the statistics of student mobility in the Europe Region over the 1980‐1985 period. Special attention is given to the intra‐European flows of foreign students, and several trends in European student mobility are thus identified.     

Towards a European Academic Labour Market? Some Lessons Drawn from Empirical Studies on Academic Mobility

In Europe, academic mobility has a long tradition which began with the birth of the European universities in the middle ages. Recently, European policies were strongly oriented towards the promotion of student and academic mobility and the creation of research networks and projects within Europe. Nevertheless, academic labour markets in Europe remain highly national and many obstacles hinder the development of European careers and the europeanisation/internationalisation of academic recruitments. Two different perspectives will be developed in this paper. First we will document the strong divergences among the national recruitment and careers processes within Europe and the problems raised by this situation. Second, we will draw on two empirical studies we conducted on academic mobility, the first one, led in 1995 in France, Germany and the UK and the second this year in France. Both studies show that most post-docs conceived their foreign experience as a personal strategy and aimed at improving their chances for recruitment in their own country. Within Europe, foreign country careers still are an exception due to accidental opportunities.     

欧盟“伊拉斯谟计划”及其意义

伊拉斯谟计划作为欧盟(欧共体)推动的欧洲国家间的大学生流动计划,为我们提供了了解欧洲高等教育跨国合作的一个独特视角。本文通过阐述伊拉斯谟计划的实施背景、目前情况以及相关评估,指出了欧盟在该计划之外致力于推动高等教育国际化的新举措。     

The determinants of international student mobility flows: an empirical study on the Erasmus programme

The Erasmus Programme for higher education students is supposed to play an important socio-economic role within Europe. Erasmus student mobility flows have reached a relevant level of two million since 1987, boosted in recent years by the enlargement of the programme to eastern countries. Thereafter, it seems that flows have staggered. In this context, the article analyses the determinants of Erasmus student mobility establishing relevant hypotheses, which arise from the migration theory and gravity models. A panel data set of bilateral flows for all the participating countries has been used in order to test the factors influencing these student flows. Country size, cost of living, distance, educational background, university quality, the host country language and climate are all found to be significant determinants. Results also reveal that there are other determinants, like a country’s characteristics and time effects, which can affect mobility flows. Based on these findings, some general recommendations are put forward to enhance these flows.     

The single European market and its implications for educational and vocational guidance services

The formation of the Single European Market is the culmination of a series of changes designed to form an economic community in Western Europe. It is designed to encourage the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital. The result is likely to be much higher levels of personal mobility, both educational and occupational. The main obstacles towards freedom of movement are non-recognition of qualifications and inadequate mastery of foreign languages. Various steps are being taken by the European Commission to overcome these obstacles and to promote mobility. These developments have major implications for educational and vocational guidance services. In particular, there is a need for extended information on educational and occupational opportunities across the European Community. There is also a need for improved support services for those who move across national boundaries. This is further likely to raise expectations for guidance services in countries where they are currently ill-developed. Initiatives to date in response to these challenges include European-level reports on the state of guidance services, action programmes designed to encourage innovation in guidance practice, and the establishment of a new European association for those involved in student guidance.University of Cambridge Careers Service     

博洛尼亚进程中的欧洲国际学生流动

为打破欧洲各国的高等教育边界,欧洲各国于1999年签署了《博洛尼亚宣言》,由此启动了博洛尼亚进程。目前,欧洲各国教育部长们在推动旨在促进学生流动的学习项目方面达成了共识,一方面,吸引欧洲以外的学生到欧洲国家修读学位项目,另一方面促进欧洲内部的短期学生流动。虽然该政策的效果评估面临各种问题,但有些大体趋势依然可见。首先,博洛尼亚进程有助于促使欧洲以外的学生到欧洲学习,但对促进欧洲内部的学生流动作用不大。其次,到毕业为止,学生频繁向外流动的情形超出了很多学者的预期,但也因国家而异。最后,由于学生流动的排他性式微,其价值逐渐减小。     

Opposite Sides of the Same Coin? Exploring the Connections between School Absenteeism and Student Mobility

ABSTRACT

Mobile students and absent students are important subsets of at-risk students in schools and districts nationwide. As such, student mobility and school absenteeism are two challenges in K-12 education with significant policy and equity implications. Although both issues are at the nexus of schooling and society and there is an apparent overlap in the attributes of these student subgroups, school absenteeism and student mobility are often discussed in separate conversations. This article connects the two disparate literatures in hopes of forging stronger ties that may benefit policymakers, researchers, educators, and students. The limited empirical evidence is mixed but suggests that school absenteeism and student mobility are correlated and absenteeism plays a small mediating role in the relationship between student mobility and student outcomes. The reasons underlying student mobility and student absenteeism are interrelated but not all reasons are common. The overlapping causes of student mobility and chronic absenteeism indicate that economic and social circumstances are important underlying factors. In particular, poverty is a key shared reason for missing or switching schools. Although both phenomena contribute to disparities in educational opportunities, experiences, and outcomes, this study posits that changing schools and missing school provide instructive examples of how inequality in society may be reproduced in districts and schools. Recommendations to address both phenomena and directions for future research are discussed.     

Understanding the higher education student in Europe: a comparative analysis

Higher education is of considerable importance to policymakers across Europe. Indeed, it is viewed as a key mechanism for achieving a range of economic, social and political goals. Nevertheless, despite this prominence within policy, we have no clear understanding of the extent to which conceptualisations of ‘the student’ are shared across the continent. To start to redress this gap, this article explores four key aspects of contemporary higher education students’ lives, considering the extent to which they can be considered as, variously, consumers, workers, family members and political actors. On the basis of this evidence, it argues that, despite assumptions on the part of European policymakers that there are now large commonalities in the experiences of students across Europe – evident in pronouncements about Erasmus mobility and the operations of the European Higher Education Area – significant differences exist both between and within individual nation-states.     

Reconsidering regionalisation in global higher education: student mobility spaces of the European Higher Education Area

This paper examines international student mobility between member states of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), a group of 47 countries that committed to reforming their higher education systems to improve the comparability and compatibility of degrees. While increased student mobility is a key goal in its official documents, little research has empirically investigated student mobility patterns in respect to the EHEA. The analysis employs multivariate techniques to identify trends in student mobility between 1999 and 2009, using a spatial approach to visualise the relationships between member states as constituted through student mobility flows. Results show that within the analysis timeframe student flows in the EHEA became more even in their distribution, but that in terms of the relationships between states, the EHEA became more centralised and segmented, meaning that key actors mediated exchanges between peripheral states and the region was more easily divided into self-contained clusters. These trends indicate a need to critically reconsider the nature of the EHEA and its role in the globalisation of higher education.     

Seeing eye to eye: An evaluation of the use of video-conferencing to support collaboration

Student mobility and trans-national collaborative modes of learning at University level have been strongly promoted within Europe. However, such initiatives are expensive, difficult to organise and do not always attain their objectives. Recently there has been considerable interest in the extent to which computer-mediated communication between students in different countries can either supplement or substitute for actual student mobility. This paper reports an evaluation of a project in which video-conferencing was introduced in the context of an established Anglo-Spanish programme in which UK and Spanish Fashion students undertake collaborative projects in each others’ countries. Project aims included fostering and supporting second language use, providing an innovative context for collaborative art and design projects and offering an opportunity to simulate trans-national working conditions. Questionnaires, observation and interview data indicate that not all these objectives were realised, though student reaction to the technology and to the benefits it afforded for collaboration were broadly positive. The strengths and weaknesses of video-conferencing as a support to collaborative learning in this context are discussed.     

A probabilistic approach to student workload: empirical distributions and ECTS

The ECTS, European Credit Transfer System, is now widely used throughout higher education institutions as it facilitates student mobility within Europe and the comparison of study programs and courses. Most European institutions provide students with the number of ECTS each course and module is worth. A full-time student needs to complete 60 ECTS per academic year, which represents about 1500 to 1800 h of study. However, there is a lack of research showing that ECTS metrics have been properly implemented in different degrees and universities. The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of the ECTS metric as a valid indicator of students’ and courses’ workloads. Detailed workload measurements have been taken in two Spanish universities, with 250,000 work hours monitored from 1400 students. This is the first study published with such a large dataset that includes a range of simultaneous courses and throughout a whole semester. Empirical distribution functions of workload indicators have been obtained. Evidence is provided indicating that nominal ECTS credit hours may be overestimated, that the variability of student workload could be too large for ECTS to sensibly characterize course workload, and that workload statistics of courses with same nominal ECTS are generally not comparable. Although the ECTS metric conception seems to be a valid metric to facilitate mobility between different institutions and higher education systems, in practice, according to this study, it requires revision, at least in the two institutions that have been included in this study. Further studies like the present one are required to test if this is a broader problem that has implications for the comparability of degrees across Europe.     

The International Dimension in Quality Assessment and Quality Assurance

Many countries are working on the design of an external quality assessment agency for higher education. Such an agency has to fulfil national needs and expectations. However, higher education is as such international in scope. This paper draws attention to the need for internationalisation of quality assessment. The national frontiers are too narrow for validating our standards. Looking at the situation in Europe, the author discusses the need for a European dimension and makes a proposal for a European Centre for Substantial Equivalence. In the future a European or international quality hallmark will play an important role in student mobility, staff mobility and the mobility of employees.     

Teacher Mobility: Looking More Closely at "The Movers" Within a State System

This article summarizes the results of a 2-part study using both state databases and teacher surveys to examine teacher retention and mobility in Washington's teacher workforce. The first part of the research examined individual teacher records during a 5-year period. Statewide analyses were conducted, and 20 districts were selected for in-depth examination. Data were examined in relation to student demographics, measures of student learning, and poverty level of the school, with special attention given to novice teachers and teachers of color. The second part of the study surveyed a representative sample of teachers regarding their views on factors that influence their decisions to stay or leave their school or school district. Findings suggest that focusing on the nature of teacher mobility within a district is a useful way to examine a number of equity concerns.     

Primary student teachers' perceptions of and motivations for comparative education: findings from a comparative study of an Irish and South African comparative education course

Comparative Education (CE) in Teacher Education (ITE) receives little attention in the literature, and this attention is mainly focussed on its decline in Western Countries. This article highlights, however, that it is not declining to the same extent in some countries in Asia, Eastern Europe and in South Africa. The study, upon which the article is based, explores a completely neglected aspect of CE in ITE – the perceptions of student teachers studying CE. The research was conducted among student primary teachers in Ireland and South Africa. Even though some similarities emerge, their perceptions are mainly divergent. It is in the analysis of this divergence, however, that a rich picture of student perceptions emerges. The main findings are: the Irish students knew much less about CE than their South African counterparts, and their main motivation for studying CE was to enable them to work abroad, whereas the South African students wanted to learn about other systems of education in order to improve Education in South Africa. Other findings concerning the extent to which CE is considered to enable student teachers to improve their teaching, are interesting and these are considered in the discussion section.     

学生贷款社会流动功用的实证分析

高等教育具有社会流动的功能,随着高等教育费用的快速增长,高等教育的社会流动功能呈现弱化的趋势。但实施学生贷款政策后,通过学生贷款保障高等教育社会流动功能顺利实现,间接发挥着促进贫困生向上社会流动的功用。为了进一步促进贫困生向上社会流动,我国应该加快学生贷款的立法工作,发展多种形式的学生贷款,并且扩大学生贷款的覆盖面。     

School tenure and student achievement

While much empirical research concerns job tenure, this paper introduces the concept of school tenure and further examines whether and how school tenure impacts student outcomes using a rich set of cohort data from England’s secondary schools. Using the number of times a student switched schools during the academic year as an instrument to measure school tenure to fully account for endogeneity issues, the resulting two-stage least squares estimates suggest that the effects of school tenure are positive and heterogeneous across students. While advantaged students are more likely to gain when their own school tenure is longer, disadvantaged students benefit if their peers have longer tenure. This significant heterogeneous effect suggests that school tenure may not simply act as the inverse of school mobility but may represent a potential determinant of student achievement and an effective school-specific measure for policymakers and practitioners. The relevant implications are accordingly discussed.     

Student Involvement in University Life — Beyond Political Activism and University Governance: a view from Central and Eastern Europe

Since the 1980s and early 1990s, much attention has focused on the position of students as stakeholders in the process of higher education. The importance of student evaluation is now widely recognised; in many countries, the move toward fee‐based funding has increased the power of students as ‘consumers’ of their education. At the same time, it is often asserted that students are reluctant to participate in university life, concerned primarily (sometimes exclusively) with obtaining their formal qualification and less with wider aspects of higher education. The views and attitudes prevalent in the student population and within institutions themselves on such issues vary widely. This debate is an international one, but is especially relevant in the rapidly changing higher education systems of Central and Eastern Europe.     

Researching social inclusion in student mobility: methodological strategies in studying the Erasmus programme

This article explores different methodological approaches to the study of social inclusion in the European Commission’s Erasmus undergraduate exchange programme, elaborating upon the approach taken in a study of Erasmus conducted in Portugal. The opening section of the discussion acknowledges the prior tradition of quantitative research on student mobility in Europe as a means of providing indicators of programmatic success to policymakers and stakeholders, and the existence of micro level studies that examine specific aspects of the Erasmus experience such as the emergence of shared European identities and building work competencies. What these approaches share is an emphasis on student perspectives: learning about the impact of exchange visits from past participants. As an alternative approach, I have focused on the institutional level of the programme, using qualitative interviews with individuals involved in managing Erasmus mobility at a diverse range of universities, an approach that I argue unlocks valuable knowledge about issues such as social inclusion within the programme.