Erasmus+ breaks academic exchange records in 2017

24 Jan 2019 | News

400,000 students and university staff spent time abroad in 2016 – 2017, according to the European Commission’s latest review of its higher education mobility programme.

A record breaking 400,000 university students and staff from all EU member states spent time abroad during the 2016-17 academic year, thanks to Erasmus+, according to the latest figures from the European Commission activity.

From 2014 to 2020, the EU spent €14.7 billion on Erasmus+. Since 2014, more than 1.1 million students and academics have taken part in the exchange programme, with 4,000 higher education institutions winning mobility grants in 2017, representing a 3 per cent increase over 2016.

The Commission aims to meet its target of supporting 3.7 per cent of young people in Europe by 2020.

In 2015, the programme was opened to third countries under the International Credit Mobility action. Since then, close to 23,000 grants have been awarded to people from partner countries around the world to visit and study in the EU, while more than 11,000 grants were awarded to EU citizens to study in. partner countries.

In 2017 the Commission also spent over €114.7 million on 39 new Erasmus Mundus Joint Degrees that involved 191 partner universities, and awarded 149 new projects for capacity building for higher education in regions worldwide.

The Jean Monnet activities supported 238 teaching programmes in the field of EU studies at higher education institutions, university chairs, networks, projects, centres of excellence and associations taking place in 69 countries inside and outside Europe.

The report is available here.

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