Mobility between Bachelor and Master’s degrees

25 years ago, in 1999, 29 countries adopted the Bologna Declaration (EHEA, 1999). This declaration outlined the basic principles of today’s European higher education system. A key objective was to increase student mobility. In order to achieve this and other goals of the Bologna Declaration, it was decided to introduce a two-cycle system, standardise credit points, mutually recognise degrees, and cooperate on quality assurance (which is a basic requirement for recognition).

When we think of student mobility, we often think first of exchange semesters (credit mobility, e.g. through the “Erasmus” programme). However, the standardisation in the European Higher Education Area, i.e. quality-assured, comparable degrees (meanwhile three cycles: Bachelor, Master and Doctorate) with comparable study durations measured in ECTS, should have facilitated degree mobility in particular, i.e. completing a full study programme in another country. Surprisingly, however, (political) attention is paid to the degree of mobility primarily in relation to the (first) university entrance qualification or as a proportion of international students in a country, i.e. only existing data is considered (see e.g. European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2024). The dynamic perspective, i.e. completing a degree in one country and then studying in another, is hardly taken into account. This is probably also due to the fact that there is little reliable international data on this topic. However,
EUROSTUDENT can help to close this gap.