Erasmus Assessing ERASMUS

Abstract

Universities of the European Community are increasingly taking part in the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students, or ERASMUS Programme. Although this programme is only in its fourth year of application, the many wellrecorded experiments permit a first evaluation. Indeed, this evaluation was required in Article 7 of the Council Decision on 15 June 1987 [1], and has meanwhile been submitted to the European Parliament [2]. On reading these first attempts at evaluation one has to notice that, as in the formulation of the objectives of the ERASMUS Programme, in 1987, so now in the evaluation report no explicit reference is made to the historical namesake of this major programme, namely the famous humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536). Nevertheless, the rich inspiration of this great European personality could have been applied to the construction of the main goals as well as to the development of criteria for evaluating the ambitious and promising ERASMUS Programme. In the present article I do not intend to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of more than 3 years' experience already acquired in the application of the ERASMUS Programme. For that we refer to the above-mentioned report submitted to the European Parliament on 13 December 1989. In that a number of conclusions were reached about factors which will