European Union’s student exchange program is called “The Erasmus Programme”. Its name is coming from famous Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Programme is firstly announced in 1987 and joined to “Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013”. Then it incorporated with Socrates programme. Former French president François Mitterrand supported the programme firstly then all governments accepted it. It was only 3200 students were exchanged on the first years of programme. After twenty years, programme is used by 150.000 students. Also there’s an Erasmus Mundus category of programme for Non-Eu students. How many students used Erasmus exchange programme totally?
Over 4.000 higher institutions are accepting exchange students on Europe. And over 33 countries there are over 2 million students used this exchange programme.
Joining the programme was harder in first years of project. Then there has been made some changes on rules and now it’s possible to join Erasmus for all tertiary-level students graduating for diploma or degree. Also students must finish first year of their school.
Erasmus is lasting at least 3 months. Main programme includes departments like Agriculture science, Business Studies, Teacher Training, Engineering and more.
Most requests are sending to England in Erasmus. France sent over 6.000 students to England in 2009-10 education season. Germany, Italy and Spain are also sent over 1.000 students to England.
University of Sheffield of England took the highest rate of students with 487. University of Glasgow took 476 and University of Nottingham took 455 for this cultural exchange.
