European study exchange programmes struggle to include more countries
Thanks to study exchange programs such as Erasmus, numerous university and college students complete part of their degree programmes abroad. But it is harder for non-European students to participate. In particular, young people from Africa or South America experience difficulties to study in Europe.
Exchange programmes are the golden dream of many international students, and are undertaken to fulfil a wide range of objectives such as learning a new language, getting to know another culture and integrating in order to work in that dream country, or simply to party and open one’s mind to how the world works outside the student’s known borders. But the question is always open: Are exchange programmes really inclusive, and is there really a big inequality between high and low income countries? From Belgium, the city of Hasselt is the place chosen to answer these questions.
Hasselt, located in the Flemish part of Belgium, has a university (uHasselt) and two university colleges (PXL and UCLL) that have become popular sites for exchange programmes. A German student studying social work is doing an Erasmus exchange at PXL. She says that the experience has been “incredible”. She says that as Belgium and Germany are two countries with a very close relationship, the bureaucratic process has been very easy: “my university has very good communication with the PXL so there was no problem with the bureaucracy”, and regarding payment she says that there was “no problem” because they use the same currency, the euro. “I hope that this will open doors for me to do my work once I graduate, as having knowledge of how other cultures work is beneficial for my career.
A student studying Education (she lives in Hasselt, permanently) at the PXL from Zambia (Africa) stated the following: “I was shocked by the culture, as I did not have my parents, and although I speak English fluently, it was difficult to integrate at the beginning, because it is not the same to express your feelings in your native language as in a second language”. As for economic opportunities, she says, “the university has a good aid programme, and there are also student jobs that pay well. With a book in her hand, she says “in the end you get used to it”.
From Asia we have a student from Vietnam who is doing a programme called “Business Economics Bachelor Exchange Program” at the UHasselt. She says that the Belgian university has a very good relationship with the one in her home country, so the paperwork was easy, but the problem is more about money. She says that she does not receive any funding from her home country and that she depends on her family and on grants from the Belgian government. English has been very easy for her because it is a “compulsory subject” in Vietnam and important for her to be able to mobilise internationally.
From Ecuador comes a student who is studying education. In this case she made a transfer from her home country to PXL University and comments the following “I have to make a living”, she says while having lunch in the cafeteria of the university “the exchange programmes in Latin America in general give few resources to students 100 euros a month, so most of us have to work. I started with an exchange programme there, but decided to transfer my whole file and study to here”. She plans to work as a teacher in Belgium afterwards, and says it is a good country because it offers opportunities that Latin American countries do not.
Sara Vanderhoydonck is an international programme manager at PXL University and comments: “In terms of numbers, there is no equality between students from developed and developing countries. Students from outside Europe receive more support from our international office for practical arrangements such as visa, health insurance and accommodation. She concludes that students from outside Europe need more help and there is also an inequality in terms of nationalities in exchange programmes.
The university published an excel where, in 2023, they received 88 exchange students and only 9 were non-European, showing that there is still a great inequality, as Vanderhoydonck has explained in the previous paragraph.
As can be seen in the graph, Spain is the most represented population in the programme with 38 students, while other European and non-European countries are in the minority. Many students say that PXL is ideal for starting studies in another language because of the facilities it provides for its foreign population.
The European Union has its own body that publishes data on all variables within the European Union called Eurostat. In 2021 they published the following graph:
It can be seen that the highest percentage of people making exchanges are European countries, followed by Asian countries. Africans and South Americans are a minority. In the case of Belgium the winner is Europeans and in the case of Spain it is a tie between Europeans and South Americans (this is due to the ease of language).
In terms of programmes chosen for exchange (analysing the year 2021), European Union programmes prevail over other types of programmes, indicating that the organisation itself facilitates the insertion of foreigners into European higher education.
Exchanges are still unequal for economic and cultural reasons, but thanks to the efforts made by universities such as the PXL, this problem is being remedied in order to seek better European integration in the rest of the world.
