ESU reaction to EU commission mobility green paper

Date: 14 december 2009

You can also download a pdf of this reaction.

ESU in a nutshell

The European Students' Union (ESU) is an umbrella organisation of 48 National Unions of Students (NUS) from 38 countries. The NUSes are open to all students in their respective country regardless of political persuasion, religion, ethnic or cultural origin, sexual orientation or social standing.  Our members are also student-run, autonomous, representative and operate according to democratic principles.

The aim of ESU is to represent and promote the educational, social, economic and cultural interests of students at the European level towards all relevant bodies and in particular the European Union, Bologna Follow Up Group, Council of Europe and UNESCO.
Through its members, ESU represents over 11 million students in Europe.

We work to bring together, train and inform national student representatives on policy developments in higher education at the European level. Since decisions concerning higher education are increasingly taken at the European level, ESU's role as the only European-wide student platform is similarly growing. Our work centres around supporting our members through organising seminars, training, campaigns and conferences relevant to students, conducting European-wide research, partnership projects and campaigns, providing information services and producing a variety of publications for both students, policy-makers and higher education professionals.

General comments to the Green Paper on Mobility

The European Students’ Union (hereafter ESU) welcomes the Green Paper on Mobility and is pleased with the issues concerning mobility that are recognised by this Green Paper.  Nonetheless, ESU sees the need for some additions and to start with, a change of perspective.
Allowing and stimulating young people to be mobile should not in the first place be seen as a way to enhance the employability of those young people.  Although the pressure of the knowledge economy is not to be underestimated, the European students are even more concerned about the maturity of the knowledge society they are living in.  

Getting young people mobile has everything to do with the personal development of those young people.  Improving their cultural baggage, their communicative skills in an open-border society and their independence, while actually learning things: that should be the real goals of mobility.  Getting students mobile creates open minded European citizens, with an open look on their own society, and an active participation in their own economy.  Starting with a confirmation of the link with business and employability shows we are forgetting once more what education is all about: allowing European citizens to develop themselves in preparation of their life in the European knowledge society and economy.  

Learning mobility is one of the fundamental ways in which individuals, particularly young people, can establish a personal and academic growth, by experiencing a different cultural background, while improving their work opportunities.  Although ESU welcomes the fact that most assets of mobility are recognised in the Green Paper, the proposed hierarchy between them seems incorrect.  

ESU also recognises the fact that education has become more European and international.  One can only imagine how the toddlers of today will look at the world in twenty years.  Although it’s very probable that Europe will have become too small for those students, in the current surrounding ESU stresses the importance of keeping the focus on European mobility, within the European Higher Education Area.  

We should not be afraid of supposedly leaping behind on Anglo-Saxon models of higher education, when not all European students have access to higher education or a mobility programme without any financial, legal or cultural threshold.  Having a competitive European Higher Education Area can be an added value for European students but will never outweigh their will to have access to higher education in the first place.  

ESU is welcoming all kinds of mobility: international, national, formal educational, non-formal educational, students, teachers and staff mobility.  For students, the only condition to acknowledge a period of study abroad as mobility is the academic meaningfulness of that period abroad.  

As ESU developed its priorities on the mobility of European students a year ago, a lot of the answers on the questions in the Green Paper will be taken from ESU’s policy paper on Mobility from 2008, which is added to this response for your information.  It should be noted that it is alarming how actual the needs are that are mentioned in ESU’s one-and-a-half-year-old policy paper, especially on a topic evolving this fast.
 
ESU has asked its 47 member unions from 38 different countries to answer to the Green Paper on Mobility as well, and to provide more good and bad practices than those that are presented in ESU’s answer.  

It is our sincere hope that this Green Paper can be the start of a series of improvements for European mobile students and that our answers can add to the achievement of having 20 % of students mobile by 2020, or to the ambition of President Barroso’s next commission to have all young people mobile.  

 

Answers to the questions in the Green Paper on Mobility

1 PREPARING FOR A PERIOD OF LEARNING MOBILITY

1.1 Information and Guidance
How can the availability of information and guidance related to mobility be improved?

ESU sees the need of an umbrella online platform containing information on all possible destinations (countries and higher education institutions).  Moreover, part of this could be an information exchange platform by and for mobile young people.  It can help a lot with the practical information, which will never be sufficiently provided by institutions or funding groups.  

One of our member unions signalises the existence of a tool called www.erasmuspedia.com, which is a wiki directory for Erasmus cities.  However, the website has been taken offline in the past months.  Students wrote about housing, funding, living costs, legal aspects and insurance, but also landmarks to visit, the student life etc.  Giving students the ownership on spreading information, without dismissing institutions from their duty to do so as well, can help increasing the amount of useful and honest information.

1.2 Promotion and motivation
What can be done to better promote and motivate young people to be mobile? How should this be done to ensure maximum effect? Please provide concrete examples of good practice in this area.
What do you see as the main barriers to the motivation of young people to become mobile?

In our view, the fear of not having your mobility period recognised as academically meaningful is a major demotivation factor for young people. ESU demands that governments sign and ratify the Lisbon Recognition Convention. Furthermore, better tools and solutions for recognition problems have to be found. Access to high quality education in all levels must be an option for all regardless of their citizenship, country, area of birth, or socio-economic background. Not having access to higher education obviously influences your ability to be mobile in an academically meaningful way. This includes equal treatment regarding tuition fees of both EU and Non-EU students in all European countries alike. Moreover, a lack of institutional streamlining creates many unnecessary obstacles in terms of very different expectations on learning outcomes, study work load, working methods, etc.
Insufficient funding for students remains one of the core reasons for low mobility rates, and this needs to be seriously addressed. ESU sees substantial obstacles to mobility on one hand in the influence of economic and educational background of a student, and on the other hand in excessive and unnecessarily rigid administrative rules. Thus ESU urgently calls upon the signatory states and parties of the Bologna Process to discuss and implement a European mobility fund or mobility system. ESU reiterates the need to guarantee equal access for foreign students to all social services offered to domestic students. Administrative obstacles such as visa, working and residence permits for students must be overcome, as they are one of the major deterrents for students who want to become mobile in a Pan-European space.

1.3 Languages and culture
How can the linguistic and cultural obstacles to mobility be best addressed?
Please provide examples of good practice.

Language tuition is key to ensuring greater internationalisation of higher education. The process of internationalisation requires components such as cultural experience and individual growth, but even more is achieved by removing language barriers.
Language courses should be provided at the home institution before the student leaves for the study period abroad. However, language tuition should be available throughout the whole study period abroad and it should be seen as an essential element of the study period. In order to avoid selectivity in access to mobility and promote successful integration, language tuition in all periods of study must be free of charge. Moreover, language proficiency tests must also be free of charge.
Language courses should include information or be accompanied by courses on the cultural and historical situation of the country concerned.
Greater use of e.g. English as teaching language might increase horizontal mobility in countries which are situated in small language areas. In the ideal situation, studies are provided and taken in the language of the respective country, and this is possible when ample language tuition is provided.

1.4. Legal issues
What are the main legal obstacles to mobility that you have encountered?
Please give concrete examples.
Can you provide examples of good practice in overcoming legal obstacles to mobility?

One of the forgotten issues seems to be the insurance of students.  Without being insured properly, a Schengen Visa is hard to obtain, and on the first level getting insured properly is for a lot of people an obstacle on itself, legally and financially. To begin with, we need more information on the insurance for students and reduced administrative and financial barriers to obtain insurance.

Strictly legal obstacles to mobility include visa and residence permit regulations for students, restrictions on the right and possibility to work and inadequate admission policies. ESU calls upon the European Commission, the European Council, the Council of Europe, governments and Higher Education Institutions to take measures in order to reduce these obstacles and guarantee fair and equal treatment of mobile students compared to domestic students. Visa problems must be tackled and bureaucracy issues cannot be an obstacle for mobility. That means that special, easier and faster procedures for student visa should be implemented and that student visa should be provided for free. Moreover, in case of horizontal mobility, it should be a responsibility of the home and host institutions to provide students with all the necessary information on visa, and if necessary to act as intermediaries with the embassies.
Another important issue is the facilitation of visa procedures also for short term periods abroad for students attending international meetings related to their representation duties.
Good practice examples in some European countries include the introduction of student visas, which have a more simplified obtaining procedure, based on the cooperation with the national higher education institutions.
Special attention needs also to be brought to students with partners and students with children, both regarding visa and working permits for the partner or children as well as regarding financial support and accommodation.

1.5. Portability of Grants and Loans
What kind of obstacles have you encountered regarding the portability of grants and loans and access to benefits? Please give concrete examples?

ESU welcomes the fact that this Green Paper on Mobility acknowledges these issues and is looking for a solution to this –among others– important obstacle to mobility.
Transferability of grants and loans must be guaranteed from the very start of studies in order not to hinder mobility. Additional grants for mobile students are necessary in order to even out longer study times and starting problems due to getting familiar with language, culture and academic system of the host country. But if all these measures are supposed to be actually effective, mobility grants and loans as well as all financial support schemes related to the mobility period must be awarded and handed out to the mobile students before the start of their mobility period. This would enable also poorer students to be mobile.

In times of crisis, students also experience problems because of the dropping currency rate.  Issues like this could easily be addressed by taking this into account in times of crisis while setting the amount of the grant or by choosing the most advantageous currency rate for the payment of the grant.

ESU wants to express its concern on the plans of the European Commission to create a European wide loan scheme for mobility purposes. ESU stresses that this is not the way to incentivise mobility.  Students in need of money to go abroad are those students that will not take the risk of creating debts for them or their families.  Publicly accepting that students have to take financial risks in order to access higher education or go abroad is giving up on or at least complicating the access to mobility for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.  Instead, ESU calls upon all stakeholders to discuss and implement a European mobility fund or mobility system designed to fill the financial gaps caused by differences in living costs and economic capacities in different countries and regions of Europe. All countries party to the Bologna Process should participate in and contribute to this system on a fair basis. It needs to be stressed that when more and equal mobility is wanted, commitments must be made: there is a great need for visible and sustainable investments and support measures by the societies concerned.

1.6. Mobility to and from the European Union
What more should be done to promote mobility to and from the European Union? How
should this be done?
Please provide examples of good practice.

As stated in the general comments on the Green Paper on Mobility, ESU feels that Europe is not ready yet to step outside the European Higher Education Area and focus on extra-European Union mobility.
However, ESU can easily note some problems with this kind of mobility as well, being visa restrictions, recognition problems and recently the (plan of) introduction of tuition fees specifically for non-EU/EEA students in an increasing amount of countries.  

1.7. Preparation of the mobility period and quality assurance issues
What measures can be taken to ensure that the mobility period is of high quality?
Please provide examples of good practice.

Ensuring the quality of mobility should be a long term goal, by receiving feedback from participants (e.g. a lot of mobile students have to fill in questionnaires after their mobility period to evaluate their guest institution),; by having partnership agreements regularly updated, and not once and forever made; and by creating the abovementioned umbrella portal showing the possibilities of mobility and the created programmes.  
A second important measure to ensure the high quality of mobility has to be a full participation of students in the decision making on mobility programmes. On every level in the decision making process students should be represented to express their actual needs and to evaluate the provided programmes.  

Students are not only a solution in the decision making process, but they can also improve the quality from inside the classroom.  Higher Education Institutions can get more out of the diversity that mobility brings in the classrooms.  Finally, having students experience their period abroad as being of good quality is also intertwined with the recognition of that period.  

1.8. Reaching out to Disadvantaged Groups
Which are the most important difficulties encountered by disadvantaged groups with regard to learning mobility?
Please provide examples of good practice of how such difficulties can be overcome.

ESU reiterates the need to guarantee equal access for foreign students to all social services offered to domestic students. Furthermore, the special needs of foreign students need to be taken into account, offering special support where necessary.
Social services include, among others, adequate and low-cost accommodation, health care, psychological advice and childcare. Specific information and counseling on social services for foreign students, e.g. offered by information centers in different languages, is much needed. The specific needs of students with disabilities must be taken into account by governments, HEI‘s and student unions.

Accommodation is a very important aspect of mobility, and has to be taken into account when dealing with mobile students. It is absolutely necessary to be able to provide foreign students with accommodation that is not segregated from the accommodation facilities of national students, so as to benefit from the multi-cultural environment created and to facilitate the mobile students’ integration in the academic community. Nevertheless, this must not interfere with the national students’ needs for student housing.
Governments must provide reasonable funding for building additional student housing to secure all students needs.

Governments, HEIs and communities must take specific measures in order to guarantee low-cost, quality accommodation for incoming foreign students. Enlarging the amount of available student housing must not lead to “ghettoisation” of foreign students. As experience shows, integrated living with domestic students and/or other citizens is a prerequisite for integration.

Sometimes students encounter unexpected financial difficulties during their stay abroad. These may be caused by circumstances in their family, health problems, psychological difficulties and other usually unforeseen reasons. In order to prevent interruptions or premature ends of mobility terms as well as serious damage to the academic progress of the studies and further difficulties for the individuals, there need to be emergency funds, offering short time grants or loans, depending on the individual situation of the student. The general existence of these funds must be guaranteed by the governments. Administration and distribution of these funds can be taken care of by different organisations, including student unions.

In the current setting the support for mobility from and to South East and Eastern Europe should also be enlarged, creating more mobility programmes there and taking into account the respective financial background and visa/language barriers.
 

2. THE STAY ABROAD AND FOLLOW-UP

In your experience, is the validation and recognition of both formal and non-formal
learning still a significant obstacle to mobility?
Please give concrete examples and your views on what can be done to improve the
situation.

As it was in 2008 the European Students’ Union stresses that validation and recognition of the period spent abroad are still serious obstacles to allow students to be mobile.  It is of utmost importance that full recognition of study periods taken abroad are secured, in order to make the study period academically meaningful. Information sharing and trust, course descriptions, quality assurance and transparency are essential when trying to resolve problems of recognition. Recognition should be based on learning outcomes and a workload effectively sustained by students. That means that all credits obtained by the student should be recognised entirely, irrespective of the number of credits usually awarded for the same course in the home institution. One can also attend the courses which are simply not available in the home institutions. The learning agreement helps the recognition mechanisms since it is an agreement between the home and host institutions and the student. Nevertheless, in the long run this is not an ideal solution.

ESU demands that governments sign and ratify the Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region (the so-called Lisbon Recognition Convention) and that governments that have already ratified it take active measures for its correct implementation. Furthermore, better tools and solutions for recognition problems have to be found. Contacts between institutions need to be close, not only to ensure the quality of the education but also to reduce problems of recognition. Adequate and understandable information about the courses should be available to students.

The Diploma Supplement (DS) is an instrument for creating transparency, support mobility and promote employability in Europe. ESU insists for an enhanced DS and demands that all HEIs issue it automatically, free of charge in a widely spoken European language as has been agreed in the Berlin communiqué.  DS could also serve for improved recognition of qualifications to promote vertical mobility by assisting universities in comparing the previous studies of the student. Creating a system of ECTS-based study points gives ample chances for institutions to review and rearrange the contents of degrees.
 

3 A NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR MOBILITY

How can all actors and resources at national, regional and local levels be better mobilized in the interest of youth mobility?
Can you provide examples of successful territorial partnerships? Can you provide good examples and innovative ideas on the funding of youth mobility? How can businesses be motivated to become more strongly involved in youth mobility? Please provide examples of good practice.

The Green Paper on Mobility is referring to business as a partner in mobility programmes in an extensive manner.  This cannot mean that the solution to mobilising youth is by letting private partners pay for them and eventually demand something back for it.  We have to beware of private firms taking over mobility for different reasons than the ones we held up at the start of this idea, and therefore ESU questions – if there are any – the guarantees made by the business sector for the social dimension of mobility and (cumulative) the academic freedom of students, staff and teachers.  

How can we best make use of ICTs to provide valuable virtual mobility opportunities to enrich the physical mobility?
Can the eTwinning approach be used in other learning sectors e.g. voluntary service, vocational sector?

Even though international experience can, to a certain extent, be created virtually, ESU is convinced that real (physical) contacts cannot be replaced by virtual interaction. Physical mobility as such has an irreplaceable value. Although ESU does see different ways in which student can be mobile, it does not consider e-mobility to be mobility. The very definition of mobility implies movement of person from one place to another, thus e- mobility does not exist.

Should mobility opportunities for "multipliers" (teachers, trainers, youth workers, etc.) be given additional support and prominence in European programmes?  What do you see as the main obstacles to a stronger engagement of teachers and trainers in promoting mobility?

ESU agrees with having multipliers and also sees the need of a better support for teachers and staff mobility as it is teachers and staff that have experienced the joy of a period abroad that can motivate students to be mobile as well.  However it should be the student's choice where to go and what to do, not pushed by goals set by an alumni association or already mobile researchers, but only based on the information available for students.  Therefore it seems more appropriate to strongly invest in information, recognition and access.

But indeed, the main obstacle to a stronger engagement of teachers and trainers in promoting mobility can be linked to the fact that they weren't or aren’t mobile themselves. Since 2008, ESU has been successfully cooperating with Education International to promote students and staff mobility.  With their joint “Let’s Go!”-campaign, national coalitions of students and staff representatives started promoting mobility at the national level, culminating in the European education ministers’ adoption of the 20 % by 2020 – benchmark in the European Higher Education Area.  

Do you consider targets a useful tool in defining a mobility strategy and if so, at what level (European, national, institutional, sectoral, etc.)?  Please provide examples of good practice.

ESU has launched a benchmark of 20% mobile students by 2020 during the ESN 20th anniversary in 2007.  ESU strongly supports this benchmark with a number of essential accompanying immediate actions: reaching a clear definition of what is mobility and a designing mutually agreed, measurable and transparent indicators showing the evolution towards the goal.  For this ESU refers to the Input paper that has come out of a joint European University Association/Education International/European Students’ Union working group on Mobility in preparation of the Stockholm BFUG meeting in September, which has also been added to this reaction.  

Conclusion

The European Students’ Union is grateful for seeing such an extensive Green Paper on Mobility. At the same time, we hope that some of the aspects mentioned in the reaction above can be taken up.  In this fight, we all strive for the same goal: making it possible for more students and young people to be mobile.  In ESU’s reaction, some supporting measures and needed actions are proposed to achieve this goal together.  
 

Attachments

- Policy Paper on Mobility (2008)
- Input Paper on measuring and promoting student and staff mobility (2009)