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Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014, End date: May 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The internationalisation of academic studies and research is a strong point at Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB), a powerful tool for development and an important element of its reputation. USMB is regularly ranked among the best universities in France for outgoing mobility, as proved by its Erasmus ranking (Number 1 university in France for its outgoing mobility since 2008/2009). The reputation of a university where students do not hesitate to go abroad for further training is well established. It is necessary to maintain this result which, beyond the reputation itself, is of real benefit to its students. As part of the Erasmus+ contract 2014, USMB planned to achieve 435 outgoing mobilities (study, internship, teaching and training). These objectives have been exceeded. The mobilities achieved in the framework of an internship (for students) or training (for staff) are those that have increased the most. To be fully successful, outgoing mobility should be accompanied by good language preparation and special coaching from the practical, administrative and pedagogical points of view. The OLS platform now gives us the means for the language dimension (but only for mobility which is part of an Erasmus partnership). In addition to the experience of a semester or year abroad which we wish to generalize as much as possible, the university relies on existing partnerships to create and develop double or joint degrees to broaden the employment opportunities of our students. USMB has also given priority to the improvement of the services offered to its international students and collaborators in order to attract, train and teach more talented young students from abroad. This also aims at forming successful collaborations in research and academic training with the best university partners throughout Europe and beyond. International students, once back in their country, become promoters of our university and more widely of our region and France as a whole. A university on a human scale, USMB offers services, courses and research opportunities which should guarantee the best level of integration for international students into our university. However, USMB results on incoming mobility, while at a good level, are lower than those obtained for outgoing mobility. USMB suffers from a general lack of awareness abroad of the opportunities it offers. To counteract this problem, USMB has been working in different directions for several years: - Develop and maintain selected privileged partnerships; - Raise awareness of our university and its specificities; enhance the understanding, by our partners, of the courses offered; - Multiply and promote "international" programmes; - Encourage the creation of double degrees and promote them; - Provide language training (French as a foreign language) before the arrival of incoming students and accompany them in their mobility project; - Help with the arrival of foreign students, researchers, visiting professors, lecturers and other visitors. The results of our international policy are starting to be visible, as witnessed by the increasing number of applications for outgoing mobilities year after year. However, these good results are also related to the fact that grants from the Rhône-Alpes region give us the opportunity to give some extra finance in addition to the Erasmus+ grants. A reduction or even a removal of these subsidies would probably have a short to medium-term negative effect on the Erasmus+ mobility Programme. Moreover, the reform of the Erasmus program has also been accompanied by a complexity of the procedures and programme management activities. This complexity is undoubtedly a barrier to a more clear-cut approach to internationalisation. In this regard, certain tools developed by the European Commission, including the OLS platform and the Mobility Tool, deserve to be extended to the management of all forms of mobility and not just those within the framework of Erasmus. This would undoubtedly help institutions to make the best possible use of such tools, for the benefit of all.
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