About Programme
The European Commission has integrated its various educational and training initiatives under a single umbrella, the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP). The programme enables individuals at all stages of their lives to pursue stimulating learning opportunities across Europe. There are four sub-programmes focusing on different stages of education and training and continuing previous programmes:
• Comenius for schools,
• Erasmus for higher education,
• Leonardo da Vinci for vocational education and training,
• Grundtvig for adult education.
Targets
Quantified targets have been set for the four sub programmes:
• Comenius should involve at least three million pupils in joint educational activities, over the period of the programme,
• Erasmus should reach the total of three million individual participants in student mobility actions since the programme began,
• Leonardo da Vinci should increase placements in enterprises to 80,000 per year by the end of the programme,
• Grundtvig should support the mobility of 7,000 individuals involved in adult education per year by 2013.
Erasmus - Programme for higher Education
The Programme is named after the humanist and theologian Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1465-1536) whose travels for work and study took in the era's great centres of learning, including Paris, Leuven and Cambridge. Like the man, the Erasmus programme places great importance on mobility and furthering career prospects through learning. By leaving his fortune to the University of Basel, he became a pioneer of the mobility grants which now bear his name.
Studies show that a period spent abroad not only enriches students' lives in the academic field but also in the acquisition of intercultural skills and self-reliance. Staff exchanges have similar beneficial effects, both for the people participating and for the home and host institutions.
In addition to mobility actions, the Programme supports higher education institutions to work together through intensive programmes, networks and multilateral projects.
Few, if any, programmes launched by the European Union have had a similar Europe-wide reach. Around 90% of European universities take part in Erasmus and 1.9 million students have participated since it started in 1987.
Objectives and actions
Erasmus has become a driver in the modernisation of higher education in Europe and inspired the establishment of the Bologna Process. The general aim of the Programme is to create a European Higher Education Area and foster innovation throughout Europe.
Erasmus became part of the EU's Lifelong Learning Programme in 2007 and expanded to cover new areas such as student placements in enterprises (transferred from the Leonardo da Vinci programme), university staff training and teaching for enterprise staff. The Programme seeks to expand its mobility actions even further in coming years, with the target of 3 million Erasmus students by 2012.
Actions include support for:
For students:
• studying abroad,
• working abroad,
• linguistic preparation.
For university/higher education institute staff:
• teaching abroad,
• receiving training abroad.
For universities/ higher education institutes:
• intensive programmes,
• academic and structural networks,
• multilateral projects.
For enterprises:
• student placements,
• teaching abroad,
• university cooperation.
Higher education institutions, which want to participate in Erasmus actions, must have an Erasmus University Charter. The Charter aims to guarantee a high level of quality in mobility and cooperation by setting out fundamental principles for all Erasmus actions that participating institutes must follow.
Information prepared according to European Commission.