thumb|The [[Lausanne campus. Switzerland is the country with the world's highest proportion of foreign researchers. These statistics show the academic mobility of international students that aim for a degree rather than short-term "study abroad" education. UNESCO suggests that there are over 2.7 million students studying in a country other than their origin country. The group of Asian students is the largest constituent part of all students who enrolled in the overseas schools. They make up 45 percent of total of international students in OECD countries and 52 percent of total in non-OECD countries.

Barrier

Most mobile students suffer from many barriers both in their lives and academic activities. For example, Sanchez, Fornerino and Zhang did a survey among 477 U.S., French and Chinese students who studied in their home countries. This survey suggests that the students from these three countries face or fear barriers such as family barriers, financial barriers, psychological barriers and social barriers.

For the credit mobile students, they will meet some specific academic difficulties. A survey by Klahr and Ratti emphasizes the importance of the lack of recognition of periods abroad and credit transfer. Besides, insufficient knowledge of academic prerequisites and qualifications of various countries, differences in the structure of the academic term, disparities in the times at which examinations are taken, these are all common problem of credit mobile students when they engage in academic activities. For example, partnering and children will have a great effect on the female's academic mobility. Some findings from qualitative interviews with researchers from Bulgaria and Poland confirmed the great significance of personal and family relationships for female's academic mobility, either as a barrier or as an incentive.

Canada, Australia, the United States, Sweden and the United Kingdom have between 30 and 50% of their researchers coming from foreign countries.

Notes and references

See also

  • Student exchange program
  • Erasmus programme
  • University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific
  • Virtual mobility
  • UNESCO
  • Academic Mobility Network