Santiago Iniguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa
One of the most exciting consequences of the Bologna Accord is the increase of cross-border movements of students inside Europe and, expectedly, the higher number of students from other continents that will come to study in Europe. What will be the countries with more appeal to attract those prospective students?
Recently, the European Commission published the latest stats on the Erasmus Programme that throw interesting conclusions about this. As you know, ERASMUS is the scholarship programme run by the EU that promotes the cross-border exchange of university students in Europe.
Table 1. Number of Outgoing ERASMUS Students by Home Country (top six countries)
| Country | 2003/04 |
2004/05 |
| Germany | 20,688 |
22,427 |
| France | 20,981 |
21,561 |
| Spain | 20,034 |
20,819 |
| Italy | 16,829 |
16,440 |
| Poland | 6,276 |
8,390 |
| UK | 7,539 |
7,214 |
Table 2. Number of Incoming ERASMUS Students by Host Country (top six countries)
| Country | 2003/04 |
2004/05 |
| Spain | 24,049 |
25,511 |
| France | 20,260 |
20,519 |
| Germany | 16,863 |
17,273 |
| UK | 16,621 |
16,266 |
| Ireland | 12,713 |
13,370 |
| Netherlands | 6,724 |
6,842 |
Let me comment some interesting evidences from those numbers:
First, Spain has become for the first time this year- the first country in terms of reception of foreign students.
Second, Language is a key factor in selecting the country where to study and English is the preferred “lingua franca”. Interestingly, Ireland is the most remarkable net receiver of foreign students, with only 1,572 outgoing students in 2005 but receiving almost nine times that same amount of students from overseas. In the Netherlands English is widely spoken there, a fact that attracts a high number of foreign students there too.
Of course, since ERASMUS students benefit from scholarships, the above included numbers do not include the fee-paying students segment that move across European borders, a segment that is particularly important for management education in particular.
However, what other conclusions would you derive from the tables?
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