Erasmus for All

Erasmus+ is a flagship initiative of the European Union, having reached 13,7 million participants in mobility activities by 2022. The benefits of such an experience are undeniable, ultimately contributing to a sense of European identity. Since 2021, inclusion has been identified as a key priority of the programme, and since then it has introduced measures to foster student mobility and make the experience more inclusive to all participants. However, extant research indicates that financial obstacles are among the primary deterrents for students from participating in mobility. Today, to participate in Erasmus+, students must rely on additional financial support (such as family). Students who cannot do it, often cannot partake in the programme , which means that Erasmus is still an elitist programme. Furthermore, the current system determining the grant amount to be awarded to students leads to considerable inequalities even for students in the same situation (e.g. destination country), as it ignores actual living costs and uses a coarse approach. In times when Higher Education Institutions face ambitious goals on student mobility, a change is needed to foster it and make Erasmus truly for all, regardless of students’ backgrounds

With this project, we wanted to first raise stakeholders’ attention to the limitations of the current grant system, broadly unchanged for the past decades, and the need to tackle the main issue with student mobility (financial concerns). We aimed to gather and systematise updated insights on key stakeholders' constraints and perspectives to then explore potential and better alternatives to the current system. This was our second main goal: to develop and test a new grant calculation methodology, which could allow the participation of any Higher Education (HE ) student in the mobility programme and provide a more adequate answer to their effective needs. A new methodology that would also: a) allow students to choose their destinations based on relevant academic-based criteria, and not on financial ones; b) simplify communication and allow students to understand better the grant amounts they receive; c) allow available EU funds to be used more efficiently, thus meeting the actual financial needs of the students during their mobility. Finally, we wanted to convey specific recommendations to the national and EU-level policymakers in view of defining the next Erasmus+ 2028-2034 programme and making access to mobility more equitable.

Within the project's first stage, we analysed other projects’ conclusions and relevant publications, and we mapped and analysed other mobility-funded programmes to understand how they calculated the amount of the grants to be awarded. Also, we organised Student Social Labs with students and International/Mobility Officers, which allowed participants to convey their views and concerns about the entire mobility experience/process and provided relevant information to help design the ideal, or at least a fairer, grant system. During the second stage, the multidisciplinary group of experts explored and developed 7 grant calculation scenarios, which were then analysed in-depth within the partnership and external stakeholders, leading to the definition of the Erasmus for All grant proposal – an alternative methodology to the current system to calculate the grant amount to be awarded to students to make mobility more inclusive, by allowing the participation in mobility to any student, regardless of their economic background. The third stage was the implementation of a pilot study (using a control and an experimental group) that sought to test the E4A proposal and the way it answered the four defined research questions. The final stage included a thorough analysis of all the research conclusions, consultation with external stakeholders and the definition of the E4A key Policy Recommendations for the future Erasmus+ programme.

We produced four official Project Results: 1) Report “In-depth analysis on mobility funding in Erasmus and beyond”, with analysis and conclusions of the mapping of other initiatives and publications, as well as other mobility-funded programmes, and with analysis of the outcomes of the Student Social Labs organised during the project's first year. The report additionally includes a glimpse of the desired features of an alternative grant calculation system. 2) Report “Removing the main obstacles to European student mobility - A proposal for better and more inclusive Erasmus grants”, which explores key issues affecting access to student mobility and ways to enhance the Erasmus+ mobility grant calculation system to make it more inclusive and accessible. 3) Study “Piloting a more inclusive Erasmus+ grant: Impact Study”, presenting the results of a pilot comparison between students participating in Erasmus+ through the existing Erasmus+ grant system and those testing the Erasmus for All (E4All) grant proposal. 4) “Policy Recommendations”, which summarise the main policy recommendations of the partnership based on the research done to make Erasmus+ mobility more inclusive and equitable in the future. In addition, other concrete outputs were produced , such as the articles “Is Erasmus+ for all? A literature review on the calculation of Erasmus grants” and “Erasmus+ isn’t for all. How can this change?”, and the “Manifesto for equity and inclusion in student mobility”. The project also framed the Erasmus Overshoot Day Campaign, and all of these sought to raise awareness about the inaccuracies of the current system and highlight that there can be another way of calculating the Erasmus+ grant. The project allowed for relevant engagement with decision-makers at national and EU levels, and it significantly contributed to raising stakeholders’ attention to the inaccuracies of the current system and the need to improve it.