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When studying abroad, international exchange students generally establish a new social network abroad. However, how international exchange students develop their social networks over time remains a blind spot in academic literature. In this article, we analyze the initial formation and development of such networks among six Dutch Erasmus+ students. Using homophily theory, we focus on the factors that enable and restrain initial social network formation and interaction patterns. We relied on a longitudinal qualitative approach, whereby we repeatedly interviewed these six students over time. Our findings reveal the importance of three main contexts in the initial social network formation of Erasmus+ students, namely the premobility phase, the living place, and the social space. These findings provide insights for practitioners on which contexts to focus on when developing strategies to foster the integration of international exchange students at host institutions.

In recent years, it has been well established that study abroad participation is a socially selective process. Today, scholars generally focus on single social markers, often using cross-sectional data. In this article, we instead adopt an intersectional and longitudinal approach to improve our understanding of the development of social selectivity in study abroad, with a particular focus on the intersection between socioeconomic background and gender. Our analyses are based on the Learning Conditions and Student Orientations (N = 49,931), a representative survey of German higher education students, and covers the period 1994 to 2016. Our analyses indicate that social selectivity in German study abroad programs increased in 2003 and remained stable afterward, which can be partly explained by differences in cultural, economic, and social capital. Finally, our analysis suggests that cultural capital also explains the gender imbalance in study abroad programmes.

Many papers on international student mobility have analysed different macro factors influencing the decision making of international students. However, only a limited number of studies have considered the role of language distance on international educational choices. This paper aims to fill that gap by identifying the role of language proximity in international degree seeking student flows among 21 countries of the European Economic Area in the years 2005, 2010 and 2015. Our gravity models reveal a statistically significant influence of language proximity on student flows within these 21 countries. We argue that language proximity simplifies academic, cultural and socio-economic integration of international students in the destination country and as a result makes the process of their adaptation to a new environment easier and smoother. Future research should expand on the mechanisms of that influence.

The overrepresentation of female students in study abroad programmes across the Western world represents one of the major gaps in scientific research on study abroad. In this paper, I explore possible theoretical and empirical explanations, drawing on Personal Investment Theory and investigating study abroad motivations and decisions of a nationally representative sample of higher education students in the Netherlands between 2006 and 2015. The analyses specifically focus on the role of parents, academic self-concept and perceived goals in female and male students decision-making process to participate in study abroad programmes. The results reveal that maternal educational attainment level potentially plays a crucial role in explaining the decision-making process of both male and female students, as well as in explaining the overrepresentation of female students. The findings indicate that female students whose mothers have a medium educational attainment level are more likely to study abroad for exploration motives, whereas female students with lower educated mothers are more motivated by professional development purposes. As such, the results suggest mothers might motivate their daughters to study abroad in order to achieve intergenerational social mobility. Together, the presented findings offer fresh theoretical and empirical explanations of the gender gap in study abroad. Furthermore, the generated insights open up new directions for future research, indicating particularly the potential of social reproduction theories for explaining the gender gap in study abroad.

For a long time, internationalisation strategies of higher education institutions across the world focused on international student mobility. However, international student mobility is a socially selective process, whereby students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to participate. Consequently, in recent years 'internationalisation for all', 'inclusive internationalisation' and 'internationalisation at home' have become prominent terms in internationalisation strategies, aiming to provide internationalisation activities to all students, including those who remain at home. To our surprise, however, existing scholarship today did not investigate whether offering a broader array of internationalisation activities also reaches the objectives of such new internationalisation strategies, namely to reach a broader group of students, including those from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds. To this end, in this paper, we investigate the likelihood of different (social) groups to participate in different internationalisation activities, both at home and abroad, through an online survey conducted in 2019 at three institutions in Belgium and the Netherlands (n = 2567). Our findings clearly indicate that the social composition of student populations needs to be taken into account when designing internationalisation strategies. Our results indicate that simply broadening the type of activities is not sufficient, as students from lower socio-economic backgrounds showed to be less likely to participate in any internationalisation activity. Overall, the findings suggest that inclusive internationalisation might best be reached through integrating internationalisation into the formal curriculum, in order to circumvent the barriers that might exist to participate in activities outside of the formal study schedule.

In the literature on international student mobility, foreign language skills are usually discussed as an outcome rather than a driver of study abroad programmes. In contrast, this article focuses on their role in study abroad aspirations and destination choices of credit mobility students. The study is based on an online survey, conducted at three European HEIs (n = 2,327), located in Belgium and the Netherlands, and revealed that students who assess their skills as advanced are more likely to aspire to study abroad compared to those who evaluate their skills at an intermediate level. Students who speak a foreign language daily are also more likely to aspire to study abroad. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that the number of languages students speak does not seem to play a role. Finally, the findings demonstrate a significant influence of knowing the official language of the country on the choice of study abroad destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decades, there has been increasing interest in the topic of international student mobility (ISM). However, there is surprisingly little analysis of the ways in which different characteristics and types of short-term ISM or the importance of host education systems and labour markets may affect early career outcomes of formerly mobile graduates. Therefore, in this study we explore, first, the relationship between participation in ISM at the Bachelor and Master level and graduates' wages and the duration of education-to-work transitions. Second, we investigate variations in ISM labour market outcomes according to the type of mobility: study, internships, or combinations of both. Third, we examine the relationship between labour market outcomes of formerly mobile students and the country of destination's position in higher education international prestige hierarchies and labour market competitiveness. We use the Dutch National Alumni Survey 2015, a representative survey of higher education graduates in the Netherlands, conducted 1.5 years after graduation. Before controlling for selection into ISM, the results suggest the existence of labour market returns to ISM and that the heterogeneity of ISM experiences matters as labour market outcomes vary according to the level of study, the type of mobility, and the positioning of the country of destination in international prestige hierarchies. However, after controlling for selection into ISM through propensity score matching, the differences in early career outcomes between formerly mobile and non-mobile graduates disappear, suggesting that they cannot be causally attributed to their ISM experience. We explain these results with reference to the characteristics of the Dutch education system and labour market, where restricted possibilities for upward vertical mobility limit returns to ISM in the local labour market., Author(s): Christof Van Mol [sup.1] , Kim Caarls [sup.2] , Manuel Souto-Otero [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.12295.3d, 0000 0001 0943 3265, Department of Sociology, Tilburg University, , Warandelaan 2, 5037 [...]

This paper focuses on international student mobility and the funding of higher education. We theorize that relying on international students for funding is stronger for institutions in developed English-speaking countries because they more often adopt marketization practices. Compared to Northern and Southern European countries, we find that they had the largest decrease in public funding and largest increase in private funding. The relative number of international students has also increased for English-speaking countries, but not for other country groupings. Furthermore, we found associations between public/private funding and international student enrollments, but these patterns were not uniform. These results show that a decrease in public funding and a reliance on international students as a source of income is not equally important everywhere. This opens new avenues for research on the marketization of higher education, including the role that differences between cultures and types of governments play in shaping international student mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study quantitatively investigates enrolments of international students using data that contains nearly every student in the Netherlands for the years 2016–2019. Using this data, we are able to perform a meso‐level analysis where we could investigate the characteristics of higher education institutions (HEIs) and cities in international student mobility. This research contributes to the literature by studying variation between HEIs and by focusing on actual enrolments instead of relying on survey results. Such meso‐level studies have thus far been very rare, especially on this scale. Although there are commonalities between types of degrees, we find mixed results for academic and city characteristics, and it appears that academic factors are more important for master students while for bachelor students city characteristics have stronger effects. The effect of having already existing stocks of international students appears to be important for all types of degrees. Aside from differences between bachelor and master students, our findings also suggest that HEIs might directly influence international student flows as this would explain some of our results. Although this study only focuses on the Netherlands, it opens up many avenues for future comparative research on the destination choices of international students and the role of HEIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In higher education institutions, web surveys are frequently used for educational, research, and administrative purposes. One of the consequences of this is increasing oversurveying of higher education students, leading to low response rates. This naturally has important implications for the validity of web survey results. Consequently, we set up a methodological experiment at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, whereby the total student population was invited to participate in a web survey in order to investigate which features of contact design can positively influence web survey participation. We particularly focus on subject line content, the communication of deadlines and their timing, as well as the delays between contact moments. The results reveal that students were more likely to respond to a web survey invitation when the subject line is written in the national language in multilingual contexts. Furthermore, although the findings did not indicate an advantage of using a deadline, they also suggested that if a deadline is to be used, a longer deadline might be more beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]