Studying Abroad

The debate within Campus Europae about a comparative survey on the costs of studies abroad started in 2004, shortly after the creation of its Student Council. Cost issues are, for many years, regarded as a fundamental obstacle to universal access to exchange in the context of the Erasmus programme. Following robust debate the Student Council has put forward the proposal that mobility grants should be awarded based on the criterion of difference of living costs between the city of origin and destination.

While such a proposal is difficult to implement because of the radically different philosophy that underlies the student financing available from European sources it brought along the first version of LIVIS, which was designed to test the robustness and feasibility of such a proposition. In the meantime the potential usefulness of such information for students considering going abroad became evident and from the end of 2005 LIVIS was integrated in the Campus Europae website.

From 2004 until 2008 the database has been compiled and updated based upon feedback from student representatives. From the academic year 2008/2009 onwards exchange students themselves will be the main sources of information for the reason that, being newcomers, they experience living costs in a way different from their native colleagues. The cost perception of their stay abroad will be monitored in order to understand how it evolves throughout the first months upon arrival. This will allow not only to update the database with increasingly precise information – based not only on student’s experience but on the experience of the right kind of students – and to have their mentors/buddies incorporating tips and advice that will shorten the adaptation to their new cities during orientation and welcoming activities that take place in the beginning of each academic year.

From a methodological viewpoint the main difficulty that LIVIS is confronted is to reduce the bias produced by respondents with different social/economic backgrounds. Students from a socio economically higher income bracket will produce cost indicators that can easily be misleading for others. In order to assuage this problem respondents are asked to provide information on living costs from a relatively modest perspective. Students from all social backgrounds should be able to retrieve useful information from LIVIS, knowing that the indicatory budgets provided will indeed allow for their stay abroad. It goes without saying that a larger budget will provide higher levels of luxury by student standards and open up wider possibilities travel or entertainment wise.
 

All in all LIVIS’s core benefits are:

• trustworthiness: most studies on living costs are based on average family’s grocery basket in turn relates poorly with student’s needs and habits; LIVIS is generated entirely on student’s feedback;


• accuracy: the usage of city-linked indicators provides with much more accurate information than country-linked indicators, as difference of living costs between capitals, large and medium sized cities are often considerable;


• convenience: while most universities are now publishing basic information on living costs according to the ECTS guidelines LIVIS allows for more detailed side by side comparison across the whole Campus Europae network.