 |
Erasmus is the EU's
flagship education and training programme, enabling more than 180,000 students to study and work abroad each year,
as well as supporting co-operation actions between higher education
institutions across Europe. It caters not only for students, but also for professors and business staff who want
to teach abroad and for university staff who want to be trained abroad.
The Programme is named after the humanist and theologian Desiderius Erasmus of
Rotterdam (1465-1536) whose travels for work and study took in
the era’s great centres of learning, including Paris, Leuven and
Cambridge. Like the man, the Erasmus programme places great
importance on mobility and furthering career prospects through
learning. By leaving his fortune to the University of Basel, he
became a pioneer of the mobility grants which now bear his name.
Studies show that a period spent abroad not only enriches
students' lives in the academic field but also in the
acquisition of intercultural skills and self-reliance. Staff
exchanges have similar beneficial effects, both for the people
participating and for the home and host institutions.
In addition to mobility actions, the Programme supports higher
education institutions to work together through intensive
programmes, networks and multilateral projects.
Objectives and actions
Erasmus has become a driver in the modernisation of higher education in Europe and inspired the establishment of the
Bologna Process. The general aim of the Programme is to create a
European Higher Education Area and foster innovation throughout Europe.
Erasmus became part of the EU's
Lifelong Learning Programme in 2007 and expanded to cover
new areas such as student placements in enterprises (transferred
from the Leonardo da Vinci programme), university staff training
and teaching for enterprise staff. The Programme seeks to expand
its mobility actions even further in coming years, with the target of 3 million Erasmus students by 2012.
Actions include support for:
|
|
For students:
|
|
For universities/higher education institution staff:
|
|
|
For
universities/higher education institutions:
|
|
For enterprises:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Higher education institutions which want to participate in
Erasmus actions must have an Erasmus University Charter. The
Charter aims to guarantee a high level of quality in mobility
and cooperation by setting out fundamental principles for all
Erasmus actions that participating institutions must follow.
The European Commission is responsible for the Erasmus
programme's overall implementation and its Directorate-General
for Education and Culture coordinates its different actions. So
called "decentralised actions" regarding individual mobility are
run by national agencies in the 31 participating countries.
Centralised actions such as networks, multilateral projects and
the award of the Erasmus University Charter are managed by the
Executive Agency for Education, Audiovisual and Culture based in
Brussels.
|
