Despite numerous political initiatives to increase international student mobility and despite the benefits of international mobility for students, the rate of students temporarily studying abroad has been declining in Germany over the past 20 years. Therefore, our DAAD-funded project sets out to explore the reasons for this development.
The project investigates, among other things, whether this development can be explained by (i) statistical artefacts, (ii) a diversion of students to other forms of mobility, (iii) a changing composition of the student body, (iv) changes in students’ assessments of the costs and benefits of studying abroad, and (v) broader societal developments following events such as the 2008/2009 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The analyses are based on data from the DZHW/DSW Student Social Survey (1991 to 2016) and the Constance Student Survey (1992 to 2015).
