How to reach the target of 3 million ERASMUS students

by the year 2012?

10th anniversary of the Erasmus Programme in the Slovak Republic, Bratislava, 25.09.2008

Natascha Sander, European Commission, Directorate-General for Educationand Culture, DG EAC/B-3, MADO 11/90, B-1049 Brussels

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Erasmus – Introduction

10 years of Slovak’s participation in Erasmus

Comparison of the Slovak Republic with the other Erasmus participating countries

Political priorities and goals

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Erasmus student mobility• Over 6.300 Slovak students since 1998 (0.38 % of the total)

• numbers are increasing steadily each year

Academic year 2006/07

• outgoing students 1.346 (0.84 % of the total) with Germany as the most popular destination followed by France

• incoming students 655 (0.41 % of the total) mainly from Poland and the Czech Republic

• still an imbalance in the number of incoming and outgoing students (ratio 1:2) but typical for the new Member States

• average study period abroad was 5.1 months (EU average 6.5 months)

• Business studies most popular study field followed by languages and philological sciences - in line with the general trend at EU level

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Ranking Institution name

Outgoing students

Incoming students

Total students

1 UNIVERZITA KOMENSKEHO V BRATISLAVE 359 143 502

2 EKONOMICKÁ UNIVERZITA V BRATISLAVE 167 91 258

3 UNIVERZITA MATEJA BELA 76 81 157

4 ZILINSKÁ UNIVERZITA V ZILINE 81 49 130

5 TECHNICKÁ UNIVERZITA V KOSICIACH 87 39 126

6 SLOVENSKÁ TECHNICKÁ UNIVERZITA V BRATISLAVE 95 16 111

7 UNIVERZITA KONSTANTINA FILOZOFA V NITRE 81 30 111

8 UNIVERZITA PAVLA JOZEFA SAFARIKA V KOSICIACH 82 24 106

9 PRESOVSKÁ UNIVERZITA V PRESOVE 52 44 96

10 SLOVENSKÁ POLNOHOSPODÁRSKA UNIVERZITA V NITRE 44 30 74

11 VYSOKA SKOLA VYTVARNYCH UMENI V BRATISLAVE 32 20 52

12 VYSOKÁ SKOLA MÚZICKÝCH UMENÍ V BRATISLAVE 28 24 52

13 KATOLÍCKA UNIVERZITA V RUZOMBERKU 25 22 47

14 UNIVERZITA VETERINÁRSKEHO LEKÁRSTVA 29 12 41

15 TRENCIANSKA UNIVERZITA ALEXANDRA DUBCEKA V TRENCINE 18 9 27

16 TRNAVSKÁ UNIVERZITA V TRNAVE 22 2 24

17 AKADÉMIA UMENÍ V BANSKEJ BYSTRICI 18 6 24

18 TECHNICKA UNIVERZITA VO ZVOLENE 17 6 23

19 UNIVERZITA SV. CYRILA A METODA V TRNAVA 15 6 21

20 BRATISLAVSKÁ VYSOKÁ SKOLA PRÁVA 13 0 13

21 UNIVERZITA J. SELYEHO 3 0 3

22 SLOVAK MEDICAL UNIVERSITY 2 1 3

Erasmus student mobility in the Slovak Republic 2006/07

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Erasmus teacher mobility• Over 1.800 Slovak teachers since 1998

• Numbers are increasing steadily each year

Academic year 2006/07

• Outgoing teachers 488 (1.89 % of the total teaching staff mobility) with the Czech Republic as most popular destination followed by Germany

• Incoming teachers 569 (2.20 % of the total) mainly from the Czech Republic and Poland

• Majority of the teachers taught engineering and technology and mathematics and informatics

• Average duration 8.0 days (EU average 6.4 days)

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Erasmus teacher mobility in the Slovak Republic 2006/07

Ranking Institution nameOutgoing Teachers

Incoming Teachers

Total Teachers

1 ZILINSKÁ UNIVERZITA V ZILINE 74 58 132

2 UNIVERZITA MATEJA BELA 41 89 130

3 TECHNICKÁ UNIVERZITA V KOSICIACH 61 66 127

4 PRESOVSKÁ UNIVERZITA V PRESOVE 29 50 79

5 SLOVENSKÁ TECHNICKÁ UNIVERZITA V BRATISLAVE 36 32 68

6 UNIVERZITA KONSTANTINA FILOZOFA V NITRE 32 35 67

7UNIVERZITA KOMENSKEHO V BRATISLAVE   66 66

8 UNIVERZITA PAVLA JOZEFA SAFARIKA V KOSICIACH 40 25 65

9 KATOLÍCKA UNIVERZITA V RUZOMBERKU 26 29 55

10 SLOVENSKÁ POLNOHOSPODÁRSKA UNIVERZITA V NITRE 17 34 51

11 EKONOMICKÁ UNIVERZITA V BRATISLAVE 15 17 32

12 TECHNICKA UNIVERZITA VO ZVOLENE 12 15 27

13 AKADÉMIA UMENÍ V BANSKEJ BYSTRICI 14 13 27

14 UNIVERZITA SV. CYRILA A METODA V TRNAVA 11 9 20

15 UNIVERZITA J. SELYEHO 12 2 14

16 TRNAVSKÁ UNIVERZITA V TRNAVE 7 6 13

17 VYSOKÁ SKOLA MÚZICKÝCH UMENÍ V BRATISLAVE 8 5 13

18 TRENCIANSKA UNIVERZITA ALEXANDRA DUBCEKA V TRENCINE 3 8 11

19 BRATISLAVSKÁ VYSOKÁ SKOLA PRÁVA 1 6 7

20 UNIVERZITA VETERINÁRSKEHO LEKÁRSTVA   3 3

21 VYSOKA SKOLA VYTVARNYCH UMENI V BRATISLAVE 2 1 3

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Participation in Erasmus projects 2007/08

Erasmus intensive programmes

The Slovak national agency received 5 applications, which all were accepted (4 new and 1 renewal) with 21 partners involved in the different intensive programmes (duration mainly 2 weeks)

Erasmus multilateral projects

mainly active as partners, which gives potential for increase• 12 higher education institutions are partners in networks• 1 partner in curriculum development project• 2 partners in virtual campuses• 1 partner in modernisation of higher education project• 1 partner in accompanying measures

From the four submitted proposals only 1 project of a Slovak coordinator was selected in the area of modernisation

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Well performance in Erasmus mobility

annual rates of increase of incoming students and teachers are among the highest of the 31 participating countries

However comparing the Slovak Republic with countries of a similar size like Lithuania, Ireland and Denmark there is still potential of improvement:

• Denmark and Ireland send the double of students; even Lithuania has a considerable higher number of outgoing students.

• gap is even greater for incoming students Lithuania and Slovakia have similar numbers, but Denmark and Ireland receive twelve times more students

• Concerning teacher mobility the picture is more positive; numbers are similar for all four countries for incoming and outgoing teachers

Comparison with the other Erasmus participating countries

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Political priorities

„Mobility for all“

• Make periods of learning abroad a rule, rather than the exception

• for the moment 3,5 % of students and teachers are mobile European wide with Erasmus

• the target of 15 % should be reached by 2015

Recommendation of High-Level Expert Forum

• Europe needs more and better mobility – Making Learning Mobility an Opportunity for All (not just to students, but to young people in general including apprentices, secondary school level students, young entrepreneurs, artists and volunteers)

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3 million Erasmus students by 2012

„Ambitious goal“

• Within 20 years 1.5 million students were reached

• Double the figure now in 6 years

• In order the reach the goal an 10 % increase of Erasmus students is needed

• However, only 3 % were achieved lately (2006/07) after an increase of 7 % in the previous years

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How to reach the goals?

„Mobilisation of all parties involved“

• Use all the possibilities, Erasmus offers for mobility:

- Erasmus for students: study abroad – placement abroad

- Erasmus for staff: teach abroad – be trained abroad

- intensive programmes

• Use the summer gap, e.g. for placements and summer schools (IPs)

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How to reach the goals?

Funding

• The limit of what the Lifelong Learning Programme can finance has been reached

• other sources of funding, whether national, regional or local as well as other EU sources e.g. Structural Funds need to be developed

enable us to fund more students

enable us to provide higher grants

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How to reach the goals?Promotion

• Promotion campaigns on European, national and regional level to target groups and multipliers

• Erasmus must be more attractive to students

• Benefits of participating in Erasmus must be better publicised

VALERA study of 2006 found that a period of study abroad helps to - enhance international competences - contributes to international mobility of graduates - places former Erasmus students in visibly international professions

there is a positive and sustainable effect by being mobile already after 6 weeks abroad

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How to reach the goals?

Quality issues

• To ensure that students are well informed before and during their period of mobility

lack of such basic information a frequent complaint from students

• Need to have a serious monitoring of the implementation of the Erasmus Charter in universities

this year the European Commission envisaged having the Bologna experts also promoting Erasmus – regrettably not much interest

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How to reach the goals?

Recognition of period spent abroad

• Most recent student survey carried out by the Erasmus Students Network (ESN) shows that while 58 % got full recognition and a further 25 % received recognition for most of their courses

• Non recognition remains a significant problem for around 17 % of all students

The attractiveness of a period abroad is crucially dependent on the recognition issue

Greater efforts should be made to resolve legitimate recognition problems

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Cooperation between higher education and enterprisesPriority for the European Commission

• Involvement of enterprises and the labour market

• many of the new actions Erasmus offers are neither known to the industry nor to the students

- placements for students - mobility of higher education staff to enterprises - lecturers from enterprises in higher education institutions

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Modernisation agenda

• give more autonomy to the higher education institutions by

- governance reform

- Bologna / curricular reform

- funding reform

- partnerships with business

- competition / excellence

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Conclusions• Erasmus has been the initiator of the Bologna Process

• Erasmus is the principal instrument to support the higher education reform further

• Use the unused potential of the Erasmus Programme

increase mobility for students

increase mobility for staff

participate in Erasmus projects

participate in Erasmus networks

There is still a substantial number of students willing to go abroad but who have not yet done so. This is a significant reservoir to tap into!

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