Today, international student mobility has moved from unorganised or self-organised study abroad to a variety of mobility forms organised within programmes. It has also become an issue of economic competitiveness, like attracting best talent, wealth creation and brain drain. Apart from the sheer numbers of incoming and outgoing students, the flows of mobility have been of interest as well.
To collect international experiences through spending a limited period of study abroad during the course of a programme of study has become a rather normal and frequent event for European students. Mobility is supposed to serve at least two basic goals of higher education which are deemed important: first point is International experiences help to develop the personality by broadening the horizon of the individual student and provide him or her with sufficient flexibility and cultural as well as social knowledge to be able to adapt to unfamiliar situations and to act appropriately. Second point is International experiences also help to gain a number of qualifications—beyond an improved knowledge of a foreign language—that contribute to later employment ability and perhaps a career in an international context. Just as important as sending one’s own students abroad has become the issue of receiving students from abroad, again two basic goals are connected to it: first one is majority of students’ remains that cannot or will not go abroad. They are given the opportunity of getting to know foreign cultures by mingling with students from abroad at their home university. Internationalisation at home is the term used in Europe for this. It is hoped that students from abroad will develop a closer connection to the country in which they spent part of their studies and that they will favour companies from this country for investment opportunities in their home countries after their return and during their subsequent careers.
