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Research Proposal

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The benefits of the Erasmus mobility programme on students’ job opportunities

Version number 2 Simon GEVCEN (438137)

Master of Science in International Business Economics and Management Academic Year 2013 – 2014

Supervisor: Pr. Oliver HOLZ

1 Research Context

Erasmus is one of the main realizations of the European Union for the past few decades. Designed by the European Commission, it is the EuRopean Action Schema for the Mobility of University Students and it has this key idea of allowing students and teachers from all around Europe to study and teach abroad, either in another Member State or in Island, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, or Turkey (European Commission, 2013). Since the launch of Erasmus in 1987 (Anefor, 2012), around three million students have had the opportunity to be welcomed in a foreign university. As this number has been continuously increasing each year (European Commission, 2008-2009), it seems that this exchange programme tends to become a significant part of European students’ life and study programme (Ballatore, 2010). My personal experience as an Erasmus student from Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis to Galatasaray Üniversitesi in Istanbul, Turkey can witness that fact. However, this rising number of students benefiting from this schema isn’t enough to understand its success story. Indeed, when the project was proposed in 1986, the European Commission was in a delicate position as some Member States were hostile to it because they already had exchange programmes at their national level, whereas others promoted it (European Commission, 2013). Specifically, those reluctant Member States were reticent to increase the European budget but an agreement has been settled and the programme was launched for the academic year 1987/1988 with 3 244 students from 11 countries. Since the literature on this topic isn’t really developed yet, mainly because Erasmus remains a quiet “new” phenomenon, my research will be exploratory. Even though Erasmus exists for more than 25 years, only a few authors have been researching on Erasmus. One of them is Magali Ballatore from Université Aix-Marseille I who compared the unequal uses of the exchange programme between England, France and Italy (Ballatore, 2007). Another one is Melissa Härtel from Institut européen de l’Université de Genève who dealt in her research with the construction of the European cultural space via the Erasmus programme (Härtel, 2007). Specifically, Erasmus heightens the awareness of a hypothetical European identity as European cultures have a lot in common (Vaniscotte, 2003). However, these researches haven’t been look at why the Erasmus programme is such “popular” and why students are “unanimous” about an “experience” that would be about “overcoming boundaries of mind” (Anefore, 2012) by offering to this person an authentic “plus” for the curriculum vitae. Nevertheless, are job opportunities associated to this unique experience?

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Personally, when I was studying Political sciences at Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis during my bachelor, I’ve been selected to experience this exchange programme. At that time, I knew that it would have been an opportunity for the future as for the day I would enter the labour market, but this is exactly the point. Why kind of benefits could be linked to it? The core of this thesis deals with whether this programme could really be a plus or what benefits can be taken from such an experience. The personal knowledge’s that I acquired from that experience are going to be the real basis for the step-by-step development of this thesis. Indeed, the aim of my study seeks the enlargement of the knowledge on Erasmus in this particular extent which is the consequences of the Erasmus programme in terms of personalization of the students’ moves. The grey area is in the process behind the travel of these students that could either lead to a personalization or to socialization. To make this point clear, universities tend to become sites with a “more human scale” (Ballatore, 2007) but, at the same time, the European policy is to allow people to move across Europe, leading to new study contexts with potential effects on job opportunities. Why does it lead to new contexts and effects? One example could the internationalization of students which potentially creates an “elite estranged with the non-going students” (Papatsiba, 2003).

2 Research Question and Objectives

My research deals with the outcomes of the Erasmus programme, especially the derived benefits that involved students can raise as a plus when confronted to others when they finish their programme and enter the labour market. The research question wants therefore to know What are the benefits of the Erasmus mobility programme on students’ job opportunities?. A similar research, leaded at worldwide level, concluded that studying abroad has a positive effect on students’ mobility in the labour market, focusing on international jobs level (Opper et al., 1990). Hence, in order to answer this research question, the core of the thesis will be structured by a certain number of objectives, which are goals giving the direction of thesis.

Firstly, as 33 countries are part of the Erasmus programme, it would be impossible to take all these countries into account. Since all of them can’t be studied, the feasibility of the research requires then to select a smaller number of countries. The criterion for the selection would then focus on one Western (Belgium, Brussels) and one Eastern (Turkey, Istanbul) European countries. Why such a comparison? The idea is to compare the difference that would appear in the job opportunities and the value given to the programme on both sides of the continent, so that cultural differences could be highlighted to some extent. Once selected, a certain number of universities from these countries would be chosen. The selection method for these universities isn’t determined yet, but one method could be the following. Find the most recent universities classification in these countries, and choose the most reputed and the least reputed host universities. Then, inside these universities, students will have to be found in order to interview them and collect data to analyse.

Secondly, interviewing students in order to have their viewpoints on the benefits of Erasmus for their career isn’t enough. Since the creation of Erasmus in 1987, a plenty of organizations appeared to promote, help and give advices to Erasmus students. The Erasmus Student Network is the most famous one and, actually, the ESN mentions that its mission is to “provide opportunities for cultural understanding and self-development” (ESN International, 2013).

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Interviews with people linked to this organization could help to answer our research question, in the sense that they participate to the mobility of European students. They could give ideas of reasons why the Erasmus creates new opportunities for students, either in the country where they’ve been living for a few months or in their country of origin where they come back with new acknowledgments and experiences.

Thirdly, as there are the students and organizations sides in my thesis, there is also the labour side. Indeed, another objective would be the analysis of requirements when employers are to engage newly graduated young people. To be specific, if some employers are confronted to two people with the same bachelor but one of them has an Erasmus exchange in his curriculum vitae, would the employer select the one who benefited from the Erasmus and, if yes, for what reason(s)?

3 Methodology

Since “the goal of a research is to understand something” (Teirlinck, 2013), this study consists on a qualitative research which is “an interpretivist model that allows the existence of multiple subjective perspectives” (Teirlinck, 2013). To be specific, the goal of this research is exploratory because only a few researches, mentioned in the research context, have been done on the Erasmus exchange programme. As little is known and as the acknowledgments still have to be improved, an in-depth exploration matches best to these circumstances. This exploration deals with a research question that is feasible because, on the one hand, there will be sufficient time to conduct the study (from January 2014 to January 2015) and because, on the other hand, there will be enough resources with the interviews, surveys and other data collected from the few previous studies in the literature. However, the research can’t determine if the respondents targeted will all be reachable when necessary, and if they’ll cooperate correctly and reliably. We take this difficulty into account but we assume, for the moment, that it isn’t a barrier. Moreover, a good qualitative research has to be linked with personal own interest (Teirlinck, 2013). In that case, my interest in this research is to develop and widen the knowledge’s on Erasmus on the basis of what I experienced by myself for six months at Galatasaray Üniversitesi in Istanbul, Turkey. This explains why this research is going to have an inductive approach that goes from particular to general in order to “generate theory from the research” (Teirlinck, 2013). To make these points clear, the way theory will be generated depends on the objectives.

Firstly, one point is the population that targets the students who benefited from the Erasmus programme in any of the 33 participating countries. Another point is the sample which focuses (1) on students who have been hosted in Istanbul, Turkey and on those who have been hosted in Brussels, Belgium and (2) on the students from the population who are currently doing their study-abroad programme. Hence, the sample intends theoretically a quiet smaller number of students than the whole population but how to find and contact these students practically? As the list of universities in these two cities isn’t something difficult to get holds of, all those participating to the programme necessarily have Erasmus departments and these are going to be the mean to find students. In this study, around 50 students are expected to be part of interviews, with an equal division for each city: 25 in Brussels and 25 in Istanbul. The Erasmus department of universities in Brussels are normally going to be reached without difficulties: face-to-face, by phone and by emails.

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However, in order to come into contact with those in Istanbul, emails are going to be the main tool. An identical questionnaire is going to be submitted to all the students with a first broad question like “Why did you apply for an exchange programme?” and then sub-questions like “What do you expect to learn in terms of acknowledgments or capabilities, from experience?” or “How do you think you will highlight your experience for a job application?”.

Secondly, as the first objective deals with the student side, the second objective concerns the organization one. It has been said that the Erasmus Student Network (ESN) is one of the main organization working to help Erasmus students in their sojourn. On the one hand, as it has offices in Brussels, meetings with people in charge of ESN Brussels can be made for interviews. On the other hand, I already know people inside ESN Istanbul since I’ve been part of it during my stay in this city. Face-to-face interviews will be made in Brussels and interview-administered in Istanbul, in order to acquire personal witnesses from them as those working in that kind of association have often been Erasmus students themselves, with questions like “How do you think the Erasmus students acquire experiences from their sojourn that they could raise as must when back in their home country?”.

Thirdly, as the study seeks the impact of the Erasmus programme, it necessarily needs information provided by employers regarding the job opportunities. An ideal number of 50 employers is expected to be found in order to collect data, using the following method. Jobs can be categorized in many types: IT, Marketing, Finance and Insurance, Media, Science, Law, Education, Administration, Engineering, Manufacturing, Health, Tourism, Arts, Public (Stepstone, 2013). Employers of firms in each of these categories can be found via various network of job recruitment, for Brussels and for Istanbul as well. Contacts by emails will be sent and appointments will be made. Again, an identical questionnaire is to be submitted to all the recruiters with questions like “Put aside the specific acknowledgments required for a specific job, what do you expect from candidates in terms of social, cultural and personal experiences?”

Additionally, the data collected are going to be anonymous, unless authorization is given by the concerned individuals for disclosure. However, the validity and the reliability of the data have to be checked but, as this research is going to have answers from students in Brussels and in Istanbul and from employers and organizations from both cities, any other researcher can rely on these data because interviews and surveys are adequate instruments for a qualitative research which seeks to discover the benefits of the Erasmus programme on students’ job opportunities. Once the data are collected, these information’s will have to be analysed and interpreted. For the interviews by email, the answers are already transcribed. However, for the face-to-face interviews, the respondent will be asked whether the answers can recorded or not and notes are going to be taken at the same time based on a clear organized sheet with all the reported questions. Once all the answers are transcribed, they’ll be organized and analyzed via NVivo 10 which is a programme devoted for qualitative and mixed methods research. It lets the researcher collecting, organizing and analyzing content especially from interviews.

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4 Planning

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5 References

Literature materials

Ballatore, M. (2010) Erasmus et la mobilité des jeunes européens: entre mythes et réalités, Paris, France: Presses Universitaires de France

Ballatore, M. (2007) L’expérience de mobilité des étudiants Erasmus: les usages inégalitaires d’un

programme d’« échange ». Une comparaison entre l’Angleterre, la France et l’Italie, Paris, France: Université Aix-Marseille I & Università degli studi di Torino

Gourmelen, N. (2008) « L’Europe bloquée »: Erasmus face à la bureaucratie universitaire française.

Paris, France: Sciences Po Rennes Härtel, M. (2007) « Erasmus » ou la construction d’un espace culturel européen.

Genève, Suisse: Institut européen de l’Université de Genève Opper, S., Teichler, U., Carlson, J., (1990) Impacts of study abroad programmes on students and

graduates, London, United Kingdom: Jessica Kinglsey Publishers

Papatsiba, V. (2003) Des étudiants européens. “Erasmus” et l’aventure de l’altérité, Berne, Switzerland: Peter Lang

Teirlinck, P. (2013) Business Research Methods: Qualitative research (slides),

Brussels, Belgium: Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel

Vaniscotte, F., A., West A. (2003) La mobilité étudiante en Europe, mythe ou réalité? Comparaison entre la France et le Royaume-Uni, Paris, France: L’Harmattan

Internet materials Anefore (2012) The Erasmus Experience. Retrieved 12 November 2013 from

http://www.anefore.lu/sites/default/files/file/Docs%20en%20annexe/The%20Erasmus_Experience.pdf

Erasmus Student Network International (2013) Retrieved 16 November 2013 from

http://www.esn.org European Union. European Commission, Directorate-General for Education and Culture. Lifelong

Learning Higher Education and International Affairs. Higher education “Erasmus”. (2008-2009) The Erasmus programme: A Statistical overview. Retrieved 12 November 2013 from http://ec.europa.eu/education/erasmus/doc/stat/report0809.pdf

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European Union. European Commission. (2013) Education & Training, Lifelong Learning Programme. Retrieved 12 November 2013 from http://ec.europa.eu/education/ lifelong-learning-programme/erasmus_en.htm

European Union. European Commission. (2013) Histoire du programme Erasmus. Retrieved 13

November 2013 from http://ec.europa.eu/education/erasmus/history_fr.htm Statistics for All (2013) Retrieved 14 November 2013 from http://www.statisticsforall.eu Stepstone (2013) Retrieved 14 January 2014 from http://www.stepstone.be