After nearly ten years of experience of fostering inter-university cooperation, EuMIGS has developed its own guidelines for building sustainable structures for student and teaching mobility.
In a world of increasing student and academic mobility, master programmes often remain remarkably local (and national) in their organization and teaching despite attracting students from around the globe. This is evident in many aspects, ranging from semester schedules and breaks to grading systems and curriculum content. At the same time, students and academic staff are increasingly mobile, often building careers on making use of funding and job opportunities in several countries. It is therefore timely to consider how this reality might be more directly reflected in the organization of master programmes. Mobility can provide not only richer opportunities and valuable experiences for students, but also strategic benefits for the programmes and their universities more broadly.
Student mobility requires agreements among partner universities and, in most cases, courses offered in English. However, the internationalization of master programmes can extend far beyond individual mobility. In the frame of an Erasmus+ co-funded project between 2022 and 2025, EuMIGS experimented with different long-term, short-term, in-person, online and hybrid mobility formats with the aim of better responding to our students' diverse needs and capabilities for becoming mobile. The experiences of the Erasmus+ co-funded project are part of the guidelines.
The EuMIGS guidelines offer insights into, and reflections on, a range of relevant considerations arising in the conception and organization of such a network. The aim is to provide guidelines and background information intended to inspire the development of similar initiatives in other thematic fields.