Abstract:

For the past 35 years the Erasmus+ Programme – a flagship initiative of European Union to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe – has been associated primarily with opening borders and supporting higher education students to pursue part of their education path outside their home country at a partner university. Hundreds of thousands of learners benefit each year from such an opportunity, and as numerous studies show, they often consider this time to be the best period related to their studies.
The authors of this paper discuss the results of their own research on Erasmus+ students in the context of their further pathways on the labour market and the influence of this international education experience on their professional careers. The research was carried out on the sample of over one thousand graduates, who benefited from international mobility as a part of their studies or internship abroad. Participants took part in the online survey three times: 1, 3 and 5 years after the formal completion of their studies stage during which they went abroad. The survey results provided data on the graduates’ performance on the labour market with a focus on both, the first full-time job and further career paths.
According to the study almost half of the graduates started their first full-time job during the studies, while one ninth had never had a status of a full-time employees. Furthermore, completion of the relevant fields of studies as well as knowledge of foreign languages were assessed as the most important assets while looking for the first job. The experience of students’ mobility was also considered as a significant factor, however it turned out not to be crucial in this context.
The three waves of measurement conducted on the same sample of former students provided comparative data between set time intervals and therefore gave the chance to track their steps on their career paths. It turned out that the shares of respondents with relatively high salaries, having the full-time contracts or playing the managerial roles in their companies had been increasing over the years in each subsequent group. Furthermore, graduates with more professional experience turned out to be less likely to change their jobs than those who have just started their careers. This may lead to the conclusion that 3 to 5 years after graduation, individuals’ position on the labour market becomes more stable and their willingness to change jobs decreases. Overall, the research revealed the progressive development of graduates’ careers in terms of both, working conditions as well as stabilizing their career paths.

Keywords:

Erasmus+, graduates’ pathways, tracer study, learning mobility, professional career.