Designing the (Most) Mobile University: The Centrality of International Student Mobility in Luxembourg’s Higher Education Policy Discourse

Abstract

The nexus of national educational and migration policies and international student mobility (ISM) in Europe becomes strikingly visible in Luxembourg. ISM is central for higher education policy in Luxembourg, but also for larger questions of social integration and economic development. Based on a discourse analysis of the political debates surrounding the foundation of the University of Luxembourg in 2003, we analyse how and why ISM became a cornerstone of higher education policy in Luxembourg. Our findings reveal that, on the one hand, incoming student mobility -and the establishment of an international research university -was and is seen as a means of competing for the best and brightest, regionally and globally, and of securing human resources to satisfy a booming, internationalised labour market. On the other hand, outgoing student mobility has traditionally been viewed as the main mechanism to establish international networks across Europe and foster elites back home. Both incoming and outgoing student mobility are thought necessary to establish and maintain a competitive and sustainable knowledge economy. Reconstructing the underlying rationales behind the support for ISM as the key to higher education policy, we explain why Luxembourg currently has the highest proportion of ISM worldwide.

Comparative education in an age of competition and collaboration

“…There, I coordinated fellowship programmes, experienced multidisciplinary research planning and peer review from within a globalist grant-making organisation (see Lamont 2009), and built bridges between scholars from diverse countries and disciplines (see Stevens, Miller-Idriss, and Shami 2018;Kamola 2019). Thereafter, I entered the inaugural cohort of the 'Transatlantic Masters' (TAM) programme at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with partial funding from the European Commission, a major supporter of cross-border exchange and international student mobility (Powell and Finger 2013;Kmiotek-Meier, Karl, and Powell 2018). Moving to Berlin for the programme's European portion, I wrote my MA thesis in Germana comparative study of social science funding by the US National Science Foundation and the German Research Foundation (DFG) -at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (est.…”

“…Founded in 2003, the University of Luxembourg has achieved considerable success due in large measure to its global recruitment of faculty and staff who contribute their existing global networks Dusdal 2017a, 2017b). Indeed, by design and parliamentary decree, Luxembourg has the highest rates of international student mobility worldwide (Kmiotek-Meier, Karl, and Powell 2018). Its high international co-authorship rates also confer tremendous advantages for in-depth comparative studies and the potential to bridge theoretical traditions in English, German, and French (Powell and Dusdal 2017a).…”

Europeanizing Universities: Expanding and Consolidating Networks of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Programme (2004–2017)

“…These university-targeted incentives mainly include funding instruments, such as mobility programs, that seek to directly impact European universities through support for and influence on their cross-border activities. Importantly, we note that universities have always been close to the center of European integration processes in general and to the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in particular, especially regarding cross-border student mobility (Beech, 2019;Kmiotek-Meier et al, 2020). In fact, after the founding of the Council of Europe in The Hague (1948), the idea of a federation of European universities and the development of distinctly European (higher) education was discussed (de Wit and Verhoeven, 2001;Pépin, 2006).…”

Capturing agency in different educational settings. A comparative study on youth perceptions of mobility-framing structures

“…HE student mobility (outgoing students from Luxembourg) In Luxembourg, one can speak of a national tradition of educating young people abroad (Kmiotek-Meier & Karl, 2017;Kmiotek-Meier et al, 2018). Mobility is written into the tertiary education trajectory.…”