Record-breaking year for Erasmus: 270,000 students studied or trained abroad

Students like Erasmus more and more. The programme created for granting students the possibility of studying or training abroad marked another record-breaking year, according to the statistics released by the European Commission: 270,000 students went abroad in 2012-2013. The choice of studying into a foreign Universtity is the most popular, still the possibility of Erasmus job placement in companies is increasingly taken: about 55,000 students made it, one students out of five.The most popular destination is Spain, attracting over 40,000 students, followed by Germany (30,000), France (29,000) and the UK (29,000). Italy comes immediately after, with 19,964 foreign students hosted. Countries sending the highest number of students as a proportion of their graduate population were Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Finland, Latvia and Spain. Italian students participating Erasmus were 25,805 – 10% more than the previous year.

On average, the Erasmus student is 22 years old, 61% of them are women; students went abroad to study for six months and the average grant was 253€.

Erasmus is not just an exchange scheme for students: in 2012-2013 more than 52,600 academic and administrative staff received funding from Erasmus to teach or train abroad. Some 500 staff from businesses, with an increase of more than 20% from the previous year, also received Erasmus support to teach at higher education institutions abroad.

Over the next seven years (2014-2020), the new Erasmus+ programme will provide grants for 4 million people, including 2 million higher education students and 300,000 staff.