Inclusive universities: evidence from the Erasmus program

Luca De Benedictis,Silvia Leoni

doi:10.1007/s41109-021-00419-x

Abstract

The Erasmus Program is the main international mobility program in Europe and worldwide. Since its launch in 1987, it has been growing both in terms of participants and budget devoted to its activities. However, despite the possibility to obtain additional funding, the participation of students with special needs in the program remains extremely low. This work quantifies the participation of these students to Erasmus and explores the network of universities involved in their mobility, along the period 2008–2013. In addition, it proposes a novel index to measure the level of inclusiveness of universities welcoming international students with disabilities. Quantifying and analyzing this aspect could be the basis for better designing targeted policies and for widening the participation of students with impairments to international mobility.

Highlights

The Erasmus Program (European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) is the most famous example of student mobility in Europe and probably worldwide
The paper is organized as follows: the following section describes current research on the topic of international mobility of students with disabilities; the section provides a quantification of the Erasmus mobility of students with special needs with respect to the number of students with disabilities in higher education (HE), and considers differences by gender; we provide results from the analysis of the network of universities involved in the mobility of students with disabilities and we explore the level of inclusiveness of a group of universities, selected as the most inclusive for the period considered
Concluding remarks The Erasmus Program has been characterized by a low level of participation by students with special needs

Summary

Introduction

The Erasmus Program (European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) is the most famous example of student mobility in Europe and probably worldwide. This work intends to contribute to filling this gap by exploring i) the participation of students with special needs in Erasmus for study abroad and ii) the level of inclusiveness of participating universities.

Results

Conclusion