Studying abroad is not an entirely strange or new experience and can be viewed as just another phase of life  (Gürüz, 2008, p. 2).  When we have first experiences of any kind, they prepare us for understanding what it is to be a stranger in a new land.  These learning phases that we experience support us when we do eventually travel to a new country for educational purposes and help us to negotiate the new world when we engage with people of different nationalities as neighbours, work colleagues and friends in various interest groups.  This new world helps us to understand that we no longer live in a mono-cultural society but a globalised world.

For decades, students have travelled to foreign lands to engage in higher education study and with increased universal mobility and partnerships between universities, there has been a boost in the number of students participating in higher education.  Many universities now boast a robust semester abroad program which not only supports students who leave that university to study at other institutions but who welcome visiting students from other countries.  Indeed, within the Declaration of Bologna (1999), twenty-nine European countries have agreed to, among other things, promote by 2010 the ‘…mobility (for students, lecturers, researchers and technical-administrative personnel) by means of removing obstacles for the full exercise of free circulation’ through the Bologna Process.

It has been argued that students who study abroad bring a cross-cultural uniqueness and diversity to local student populations and so semester abroad programs form one aspect of most universities internationalisation strategy (Talburt & Stewart, 1999).  Semesters abroad contribute further to a greater understanding of the 'global village' (McLuhan, 1962.  The concept of studying abroad is even more interesting knowing that “the number of foreign students today is a staggering 2.5 million worldwide … and over seventeen thousand institutions of higher education in 184 countries and territories in the world” (Gürüz,, 2008, p. 2). With advanced technological achievements and increased travel, education has become even more internationally mobile with border crossing among students being the rule rather than the exception. Interestingly, this study was conducted during the period of the global financial crisis and our experience is that European students continue to participate in semesters abroad.  In this paper we argue that students do value the international experience in spite of collapsing economies and document their attempts to participate in the knowledge economy.

Gürüz, K. (2008). Higher education and international student mobility in the global knowledge economy. New York: State University of New York Press. McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg galaxy: the making of typographic man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Talburt, S. & Stewart, M.A. (1999). What’s the subject of Study Abroad?: Race, Gender and ‘Living Culture’. The Modern Language Journal 83 (ii), 163-175. The European Higher Education Area. (1999). The Bologna Declaration of 19 June 1999. Available online at: http://www.bologna-bergen2005.no/Docs/00 Main_doc/990719BOLOGNA_DECLARATION.PDF