Innocents Abroad: The Erasmus Program Helps European Students Study And Train For Jobs - “L’Auberge Espagnole”

By Mathilde Hamel. The European Commission announced this week that the total number of “Erasmus” students has now surpassed 3 million since the program was instituted in 1987. Erasmus, which provides grants, is available to students in all EU member states, as well as Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.
Erasmus – which actually stands for “European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students” -- was created to bring new opportunities to European youth to live and study in a different country on the continent. After a six-year pilot program – which ran from 1981 to 1986 – Erasmus soon became a cultural phenomenon as it often provided the first international experiences of the participants. The program even inspired an enormously popular French film, “L’Auberge Espagnole,” which told the tale of French lad studying in Spain.
As a new wrinkle to the scheme, Erasmus has formed a work placement program to entice more students -- indeed, for the 2011-2012 academic year, more than 250,000 students (an all-time record) either studied abroad or entered into job placement program with foreign companies. Read more...