Intra-European student mobility and the different meanings of ‘Europe’

One of the main aims of the Erasmus programme is to promote a sense of European identity. Whereas several empirical studies have already investigated this relationship, few studies investigate what students actually mean when they refer to ‘Europe’. Therefore, in this paper I investigate the different latent dimensions of the concept Europe, as well as which of these dimensions are particularly associated with an exchange period abroad. The analyses are based on an online survey conducted with higher education students in Austria, Belgium, Italy, Poland and Sweden in 2011 (n = 4278). The presented models reveal four latent dimensions, namely a ‘cultural’, ‘political’, ‘rights’ and ‘experiential’ dimension. Furthermore, the analyses suggest that exchange students are largely a self-selected group, being a priori more likely to identify with Europe and score higher on the four dimensions

An experimental study on the impact of contact design on web survey participation

In higher education institutions, web surveys are frequently used for educational, research, and administrative purposes. One of the consequences of this is increasing oversurveying of higher education students, leading to low response rates. This naturally has important implications for the validity of web survey results. Consequently, we set up a methodological experiment at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, whereby the total student population was invited to participate in a web survey in order to investigate which features of contact design can positively influence web survey participation. We particularly focus on subject line content, the communication of deadlines and their timing, as well as the delays between contact moments. The results reveal that students were more likely to respond to a web survey invitation when the subject line is written in the national language in multilingual contexts. Furthermore, although the findings did not indicate an advantage of using a deadline, they also suggested that if a deadline is to be used, a longer deadline might be more beneficial

Explaining social selectivity in study abroad participation of German students between 1994 and 2016

In recent years, it has been well established that study abroad participation is a socially selective process. Today, scholars generally focus on single social markers, often using cross-sectional data. In this article, we instead adopt an intersectional and longitudinal approach to improve our understanding of the development of social selectivity in study abroad, with a particular focus on the intersection between socioeconomic background and gender. Our analyses are based on the Learning Conditions and Student Orientations (N = 49,931), a representative survey of German higher education students, and covers the period 1994 to 2016. Our analyses indicate that social selectivity in German study abroad programs increased in 2003 and remained stable afterward, which can be partly explained by differences in cultural, economic, and social capital. Finally, our analysis suggests that cultural capital also explains the gender imbalance in study abroad programmes

La migración de estudiantes chinos hacia Europa

La experiencia ha demostrado que el capital humano es uno de los factores clave para el desarrollo económico. China tiene una política que intenta incrementar la capacidad intelectual de su población, favoreciendo el retorno de sus estudiantes y profesionales que residen en el extranjero. Una de las características más destacables de la migración de China a Europa ha sido el crecimiento sustancial en el número de migrantes cualificados y estudiantes atraídos sobre todo por Europa del Norte. Se puede considerar la inmigración de estudiantes como precursora de la migración altamente cualificada o como una categoría propia de la migración cualificada. El estudio del movimiento internacional de estudiantes es un fenómeno reciente y debe hacer frente a numerosos problemas metodológicos. En este artículo el autor trata la inmigración de los estudiantes chinos en Europa