News

The Eurostudent project has proven to be of the most potent ways to shed light on the shortcomings of the social dimension of European Higher Education, and it’s back. The fourth edition look into 25 countries and its synopsis indicators were released during a conference held in Copenhagen on the 15/16 June –the same week in which the European Commission announced it’s framework budget proposals for 2014-2020.

The coincidence is a happy insofar that the Eurostudent results should have decision makers doing some soul-searching on how to best invest the extra funds that will hopefully be allocated to student mobility, for the Eurostudent report reads:

“the proportion of students who have been enrolled abroad is lower among students from low social background; they are also planning to enroll abroad less frequently than their peers from high social background and are more frequently dissuaded by obstacles such as financial insecurities and a self-perception of language competencies being insufficient.”

Is this an unalterable reality? The participants at the conference didn’t seem to think so, but a lot of work remains to be done in order for the social dimension of the EHEA to be more than a matter of rhetoric.