Abstract:

In 1987, the European Commission –Education and Training– launched the ERASMUS Programme aimed at promoting exchange mobility among higher education students across European institutions. In 1997, the exchange scheme was extended to include, education teachers and administrative staff and it became part of the Lifelong Learning Programme.

For most students taking part in an ERASMUS exchange represents a life-changing experience: there is a personal growth and development, an improvement in their foreign language skills, more awareness of intercultural issues and better employability prospect. However, we must keep in mind that the ERASMUS Programme is an academic programme; consequently students’ academic performance should be properly measured and evaluated.

The research focuses on the Erasmus students from the Economics degree at the University of Valencia reveal that in most cases, the students’ academic performance improve during the Erasmus stay both in terms of the number of credits and the marks obtained, even though there are some differences depending on the gender of the student and, specially, the geographical destination of the Erasmus placement.

The paper continues this line of research and its main aim is to shed some light of the factors that are behind this increased academic performance and if it is only temporary or if, on the contrary, it is maintained when the students return to their home universities. Using linear regression models and Logit models, preliminary results show that the increased academic performance is temporary for most students and once we control for the effects of geographical area and gender, their previous performance seems to play a major role in explaining the improvement achieved during their Erasmus stay, whereas the students’ previous language skills do not have a direct effect, despite the positive impact that their stay has on the development of their own language skills.

Keywords:

Academic performance, ERASMUS programme.