Abstract:

It is clear that especially in today’s global world in which every country and the organization is visible to each other, impact of the EU as the biggest trading block in the world goes beyond the EU borders. The effect of the EU on non-member states has been observable in many policy areas including the education, particularly higher education. After the establishment of the Erasmus program for intra-European mobility in 1987, the Trans-European Mobility Program for University Studies (TEMPUS) Program (1990), Bologna Declaration (1999), Erasmus Mundus Program (2004) and Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility Program/ICM (2015) were established with the participation of not only EU members but also non-EU countries; hence, the mobility programs offered by the EU now stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic, as being more global, ambitious and integrated than ever before.

Yet, as the geographical scope and the number of member countries enlarged, some new and unexpected consequences occurred. Mostly due to the highly interlinked economies, the war and conflict among the EU member states might be unlikely today. However, in recent years, there have been several conflicts among the non-EU countries (e.g. Armenia-Azerbaijan, Russian Federation-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine and so on). This creates a trouble for HEIs especially the ones who host participants coming from the conflicting countries on their campuses at the same time. Although they are under the state authorities and decisions, as the center of knowledge and science, HEIs are open to students, academic staff and researchers coming from any country and background. With this regard, how to integrate participants coming from conflicting countries is one of the recent challenges that HEIs experience in terms of the implementation of mobility programs with non-EU countries.

The purpose of this study is to explore the challenges arise due to hosting students from conflicting countries as well as the role of HEIs for overcoming the challenges for a public university in Türkiye. This analysis aims to bring a new perspective in the literature of internationalization and Erasmus program, with a specific focus on mobility students coming from the disputing countries; also with the purpose of being a recommendation study for HEIs, as the integration of students coming from conflicting countries requires a new way of thinking and support not only from IRO officers but also other academic and administrative departments of HEIs as well. We will use qualitative type of research and will evaluate the challenges in the words of the students. The study will investigate the existing literature drawing on multiple sources including published articles potentially addressed our intended issue, domestic/international media coverages and the official documents of national authorities. Also, number of international students coming to Middle East Technical University (METU) from disputing countries and the challenging experiences occurred due to their togetherness, will be presented anonymously. METU is chosen as the case study due to its status of having the largest share of Erasmus+ ICM budget and hence the largest number of participants from non-program countries, since the beginning of the program in Türkiye. In its conclusion, the study will offer recommendations for academic and administrative units of HEIs with regards to integration of students coming from disputing countries.

Keywords:

Erasmus+, Challenges, Non-EU Countries, Integration, Conflicting Countries.