2018 Volume 2018 Issue 191 Pages 191_127-191_142
Transnational migration is one of the important themes in the field of global history, which attempts to overcome the existing analytical framework of nation-states. From such a perspective, this paper examines the development of cooperation at the European level in the field of higher education, especially paying attention to the transnational student mobility.
After the World War II, European countries began to work together in the framework of the Council of Europe in order to promote international student mobility within Europe by facilitating the recognition of qualifications concerning higher education.
In the 1970s, however, the European Community replaced the Council of Europe as a main framework for cooperation. The EC Ministers of Education met for the first time in 1971 and adopted a Community action program in the field of education in 1976. In this context, the 1980s saw the launch of the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (Erasmus), which would later become the EU’s flagship education program. In this period, transnational student mobility was expected to contribute to forge and promote a European Identity. This is why the EC’s actions in this field were confined to promoting such mobility within its borders.
In the 1990s, the Treaty on European Union finally established a legal basis for Community actions in the field of education. More importantly, from the early 1990s, higher education was more and more considered to be a key factor in economic development and the emergence of the concept of knowledge based economy reinforced such a tendency. The EU’s activities in the field of higher education, however, have not so much changed since the 1980s, although Erasmus became a sub-program of Socrates in the mid-1990s.
But things have begun to change at the end of the 1990s, when some European countries launched a new intergovernmental initiative outside the EU to realize the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by coordinating their national higher education policies. This entirely new coordination framework, generally known as the Bologna Process, brought about a breakthrough in cooperation at the European level in that it implies transformations of national higher education systems. Importantly, such an advanced cooperation was launched at the initiative of several national governments who concerned about the attractiveness and visibility of their national higher education institutions.
This shows that there exist complicated interactions between global, regional and national levels regarding transnational student mobility and cooperation at the European level has been shaped and developed under such circumstances.
