Introduction

Education and availability of highly qualified specialists is crucial to economic development. Policies are therefore often aimed at building strong links between universities, to stimulate innovation in science and business. Most Western countries show a widening income gap between those who received a good education and the rest, according to the OECD (2005). It has even been calculated that 1 per cent growth in a population's level of education raises economic output by 3 to 6 per cent (Schleicher 2006).

Studying internationally is becoming more and more popular, and educational migration is one of the most rapidly developing types of migration today. In the mid-1980s its volume was estimated to be 800,000 students. This grew to more than one million by the mid-1990s, and further to about one and a half million by the end of the twentieth century, exceeding two million by the start of the 2000s (Salt & Almeida 2006). Trade in education as a service developed very rapidly in the same decade, reaching about 3 per cent of total trade in services in OECD countries by 1999 (Larsen, Martin & Morris 2002).

Europe still lags behind the United States in investment in tertiary education and research and development (Reich 2006). In response, the EU launched the ‘Bologna Process’ and European Higher Education Area (EHEA) to raise the competitiveness and attractiveness of European higher education and foster student mobility. Nevertheless, there have been many difficulties in the realisation of the full scope of the EHEA's objectives.

The project ‘Bologna with Student Eyes’ (ESU 2009) describes students’ views on progress:

The new member states of the EU are all managing the implementation of the EHEA differently, in line with their varying political and economic conditions and progress in transforming their economies into a competitive market system (Kwiek 2008). Despite progress made on some aspects, a World Bank evaluation of CEE countries found that ‘since the transition, inequities in learning opportunities have increased’ (World Bank 2000: 28-30).