The organisation of ‘traffic flows’ in a mobility window is an important pa- rameter in the process of designing and running mobility windows, which is closely linked to the cooperation issue.
The traffic configurations of mobility windows are dependent upon the num- ber of possible destinations served by a mobility window as well as upon the directions of mobility circulations in a window. Thus, one can distinguish, from an institution’s point of view, between one-way (sending only) windows focused on sending students abroad and two-way (reciprocal) windows de- signed for both outgoing and incoming student mobility.
An institution may enter bilateral agreements for sending or exchanging stu- dents with one or several institutions, or multilaterally agree on traffic paths for students with several partners. Several destinations for students can thus be offered through either multilateral agreements or through several bilateral ones. Possible mobility window configurations, varying by type of interac- tions and by number of destinations within a window, are presented below.
Table 4: Configurations of mobility windows by type of interactions and number of destinations
One way, bilateral, one destination: A B
A sends to B
Reciprocal, bilateral, one destination:
A B
A exchanges with B One way, bilateral, several
destinations:
A B, A C, A D
A sends to several institutions B, C, D
Reciprocal, bilateral, several destinations:
A B, A C, A D
A exchanges with several institutions B, C, D
Reciprocal, multilateral, one destination (“mobility circle”): A B, B C, C A
Reciprocal, multilateral, several destinations (“consortium model”):
A B, B C, C A
Institutions A, B, C exchange students
The number of destinations in a window can be conceived at the design stage or later, for instance, if new partners decide to join an already operating window consortium.
Interestingly, the findings of our field research showed that, on the one hand, some two-way windows were actually reciprocal only on paper, being de facto one-way mobility windows. In the respective cases, a window which was of- ficially designed to serve both incoming and outgoing students was in fact only used for sending students to partner institutions abroad or vice versa. On the other hand, in some of the investigated cases of one-way mobility windows, these unilateral windows developed an aspiration to become more reciprocal in one way or another. For example, in the case of the UCU China programme, the partner institution which used to send students to a country of destination through a one-way window got interested in receiving students as well.
In the identified two-way window cases, the students could either go to one destination only, which often happened within double degree programmes, or they could more or less choose their host institution (e.g. in the Erasmus Mundus programmes). In most cases, the institutions tried, to the extent pos- sible, to accommodate students’ first and second priority destination choices. We also found out that the partners who acted as both sending and receiving institutions sometimes agreed on ‘mobility slots’, i.e. the number of places for outgoing and incoming mobility assigned to each participating institution. However, in a few cases the partner institutions did not manage to use their ‘quotas’ because of a low intake of students, the latter being not so inter-
ested in the destination(s) on offer, or because they could not offer financial support for the total number of slots available and the students could not find alternative sources of funding.
Those institutions that played according to the reciprocal mobility rules re- ported paying special attention to the issues of reciprocity and balance in their mobility window(s). However, in reality, only a few of the reviewed bilat- eral reciprocal windows reported a balance in terms of the number of outgo- ing and incoming students.
Several factors which influence students’ choice of a host institution and, consequently, balance within the reciprocal mobility windows can be derived from our study.
Prestige
Prestige or, more precisely student perceptions of prestige, seems to affect the window mobility balance sheets. Thus, prestigious and highly competitive universities participating as partners of the mobility windows attracted more incoming students, while their outbound mobility numbers were smaller given that their students often preferred to take full advantage of the courses of- fered at home. This was, for example, the case of a French mobility window partner, a highly prestigious grande école which participated in the mobility window of the UTCB MSc in Civil Eng. programme in Romania. Reasonably, the students enrolled in France, once admitted to this very selective institu- tion, which requires two years of preparatory courses, were not interested to leave and study abroad, even if for only a short period of time, irrespective of the country of destination. This was, thus, a case of lack of interest in study abroad overall, rather than lack of interest in the partner institution(s).
Tuition fees
Tuition fees were also found to be important for balanced mobility windows. As reported by one programme coordinator, the students participating in a mobility window with a US partner were expected to pay tuition fees at their home and host institution at the same time, which posed difficulties in moti- vating students to use this window. Interestingly, another programme coordi- nator reported that even despite an agreement between partners to waive the tuition fees at the home institution for the duration of a mobility experience, not all of the partners were equally committed to sending (i.e. ‘losing’) their paying students abroad.
The unbalanced numbers were also explained by different country and insti- tutional capacities to allocate funding (travel grants, scholarships, etc.) for the support of students participating in window mobility.
Language
In multiple and multilateral window arrangements, the language issues were found to be rather important. Those institutions offering the courses in Eng- lish rather than in a national language reported to be more successful in at- tracting incoming students. A similar situation could also be observed within the same institution where some programmes offered English-language tui- tion, and thus were able to attract and take more incoming students, while others did not. This situation resulted in the unequal distribution of incom- ing students and the related administrative workload within the institution. In this context one of the interviewed programme coordinators stressed that “it would be good if all programmes were responsible for offering a certain amount of courses in English for their incoming exchange students”.
Overall, the implications of the unbalanced window mobility flows seem to be insignificant for the sampled programmes because of the relatively small numbers of students participating in them (see section 9.1). In this vein, the interviewed institutions reported to be largely unaffected by the ‘loss’ of stu- dents. Even if they experienced larger outgoing mobility numbers, the major- ity of the student cohort still remained at the home institution. Nevertheless, some institutions that received more incoming students through mobility win- dows reported facing some challenges related to bigger classes and high pressure on lecturing and administrative staff.
To conclude, a certain degree of balance seems to be desirable in mobility windows, but it does not always have to be a one-to-one ratio between out- going and incoming numbers for a mobility window to function well.