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Campus Europae has been, since its inception, more than just another exchange programme. Its commitment to high quality student mobility is underpinned by a fundamental politic aim: fostering the idea of European citizenship amongst university students by exposing them to Europe’s unity in diversity through a deep understanding of the culture and language of different countries.

The problem with such an ambitious goal is that it is relatively hard to assess whether it is being achieved, and to what extent, for changes in attitudes and values are not so directly measurable as academic success and employability. However the evaluation of the 2008/2009 does provide some valuable insight on such questions.

Each year CE Movers are asked to fill in detailed surveys, which are used to monitor aspects as varied as their academic performance, recognition of ECTS earned abroad, acquisition of foreign language and overall satisfaction with the various aspects of the exchange. Incidentally such surveys also address the fundamental issue of whether their understanding of the host country society has improved.

The graphic above illustrates exchange students knowledge of the custom, traditions and religion of their host countries after and before spending a year abroad, and results could hardly be more encouraging. The “Campus Europae cocktail” of combining longer stays abroad with an emphasis on language learning and cultural immersion seems, at least on the basis of the data currently available, to be producing very tangible results.

CE Movers are also reporting an overwhelming improvement of their knowledge about the key social issue of host societies, reinforcing the impression that a well organized student exchange is much less about “vacation abroad” as it is an important component of young adults civic education.

Exchange students only have a superficial – if any – relation to their exchange destination in advance of their stay, and while there is no doubt that awareness and contacts peak during their year abroad it would also be important to understand whether they are maintained upon return. Data currently available offers admittedly limited answers to such questions, but even 6 months upon their return CE Movers still seem to be display a sustained interest in the contacts made abroad and their host countries.

The findings detailed above provide a strong encouragement to the further development of CE as an instrument for the education of European citizens, as well as on the paramount importance of longer stays abroad. Furthermore they provide food for thought on why Erasmus financing guidelines should seriously contemplate the possibility to let students to go abroad a second time in the course of their studies.