Destination cities of European exchange students

Abstract

The Erasmus programme is generally considered the flagship of intra-European exchange programmes in higher education, with more than three million participants since 1987. Whereas a number of studies investigated the determinants of student mobility decisions, no knowledge exists on the main destination cities of European exchange students. Our research note aims at filling this gap in the academic literature. Making use of a unique data-set from the European Commission containing micro-level data on the full population of Erasmus students for study purposes in 2012-2013 (n = 211,267), we provide a descriptive overview of the spatial distribution of Erasmus students at the city level. The results reveal that European exchange students are mainly attracted by capitals and second-tier metropolitan cities. Furthermore, the analysis reveals significant variation regarding the main region of origin of mobile students within most destination countries. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution-nonCommercial-noderivatives license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Theorising new European youth mobilities

“…Van Mol and Ekamper () list the 10 most popular European destination cities for Erasmus students: Madrid, Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon, Valencia, Istanbul, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and London. They represent a mix of cultural, climatic, and student‐lifestyle factors.…”

Seoul Destination: A Mixed-methods Study of a Korean University

“…Students engaged in short-term mobility, however, may find interesting tourist destinations for sightseeing/travel Mazzarol & Soutar, 2002), or better known/convenient urban locations, more appealing (Lesjak et al, 2015;Van Mol & Ekamper, 2016). Yet, when it comes to understanding why exchange students from Europe, North America, South America, etc., choose to temporarily study in Korea, there is an absence in the literature base, as this phenomenon is relatively new (S. Lee, 2017).…”

Balancing Study Abroad Student Inflows and Outflows: An Institutionalist Perspective

“…The following pull factors are also expected to condition destination choice. Exchange students not only choose a particular country or university but also consider attributes of the city where they want to study following the advice that it “is imperative to take city level into account in future empirical research into international student mobility” (Van Mol & Ekamper, 2016, p. 88). Students may be pulled to a particular destination based on city attributes.…”