The development of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has become an important educational, social and political process over the last twenty years in Europe. However, it has not been an homogenous process for all universities.
At the European level, policies for Higher Education and their resulting initiatives have significantly intensified over the last years. Among the tools available for HEIs, the Erasmus+ Programme is one of the most valuable. Study mobility is seen as its most significant action, as also an effective mean for internationalising and modernizing higher education systems.
Nevertheless, the international perspective and student mobility diverge from one country to another. In fact, internationalization in the different institutions is made up of an amalgam of varied activities, which directly or indirectly affect students’ mobility and the internationalization at the different universities. In particular, one of these activities is the offer of international programs, framed in agreements between universities and within the EHEA, to study undergraduate or master's degrees, often for short periods (Knight, 2005).
The main purpose of this study is to carry out a comparative analysis of the academic itineraries and specific educational mobility measures offered to incoming students (exchange and international students) in the education area at universities in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. These three countries of the European Union (EU) have more than a tenth of incoming students and are among the eleven first countries in the EU that receives the highest proportion of incoming students (Eurostat, 2017).
The study analyzes whether specific measures facilitate the inclusion of mobility students in the different universities in Europe. These educational practices vary depending on the mobility policies and the university of destination in which international and exchange students decide to take part of their studies.
At present, the international mobility of university students is one of the most important issues of the processes of internationalization in Higher Education. This aspect is of great importance in many European countries, since the students’ mobility is not limited exclusively to the extension of this type of mobility, but to the education quality that these students receive in the different European universities. The international mobility of university graduates is disseminated through the youth culture of mobility, which is made up of variables of an educational nature and the acquisition of experience (Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2004). This means that this mobility does not depend only on economic factors but on the need and desire to acquire a quality educational baggage with an international character.
International training provides students with a preparation to face their integration with greater guarantees and success, since it implies greater flexibility and predisposition to adapt in different contexts (Rodríguez Moreno, 2005). In this sense, international programs in Higher Education help to promote international mobility of university students since they act as a training complement when included in the university study plans. According to Bermúdez Rico (2015), international mobility is an opportunity at the level of training as well as expanding future job prospects both in the country of origin and in other countries of the European Union and beyond. This makes it easier for graduates to project their professional career from a more international perspective and adapt it to the different labor markets.
