Participants are generally younger, with parents from a more-educated background than in the overall student population (Otero and McChosan 2006). It is also observed that some specific educational programmes are particularly over- or underrepresented in terms of student international mobility. For example, in Sweden, while 37% of law graduates have studied abroad prior to graduation, the corresponding number for those studying education is only 3%. There are also differences in student international mobility among universities/university colleges. The universities with the highest international mobility rates in Sweden are all high-status universities, with good reputations and students with an upper- or upper middle class background (Swedish National Agency for Higher Education 2009). It seems that there is a Matthew Effect – meaning, students who would have moved abroad anyway use exchange programmes to do this more easily. This Matthew Effect is in fact the opposite of the stated aim of equality in exchange programmes. In the following text, I will focus on differences as regards international mobility among students on different educational programmes.
367 Mobilit y as a tool to acquire and develop competences from childhood to seniorit y
PART II: Contexts and Perspectives
Particular groups of students make use of the opportunities offered by international education to a greater extent than the rest of the student population. How can this finding be understood? Traditionally, theories about adult learners and their participation in education have focused on the individual level, and explained the differences among student populations in terms of individual obstructions and motivations (Cross 1981). One can easily find studies on participants in international education with a focus on individual students’ motivations, such as expectations, language skills, and needs as regards personal development – as well as obstacles, such as those of a financial nature, familial obligations and lack of language skills (e.g., Internationella programmekontoret 2008). With all due respect to those studies, I believe we need to shift our focus from individual students’ motivations and obstacles to the different ways in which this educational opportunity is put into effect in institutions, in order to explore differences as regards international mobility among educational programmes.
Different institutional practices?
There is also another way of thinking about the differences in international mobility between programmes, namely the supposed international
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One of the reasons for students in some specific education programmes to move abroad at a higher rate than others can be the fact that student groups differ quite dramatically between educational programmes. Higher-ranked programmes, such as law, recruit students whose parents are wealthier and better-educated, for example. Students also differ in terms of educational experience prior to their entering higher education. Students of the natural sciences, to take one group, may not have the same level of foreign-language skills as law students.