ERASMUS for Enterprises – involving business in higher education
The European economy relies on knowledge creation and application. The benefits of forging strong two-way links between universities and business are well established. Businesses are welcome and increasingly common in the ERASMUS Programme. ERASMUS enables academia and business to interact more in terms of teaching, training, exchanges and joint projects with the aim of sustainable cooperation.
Since 2007, new ERASMUS action lines have made it possible to support business employers to become involved in activities such as teaching but also to channel students and staff from higher education institutions to them. ERASMUS also supports closer cooperation to assist universities in their modernisation and in meeting the skills needs of enterprises. Participation in one of these actions is also an opportunity to come engaged in the ERASMUS programme and a springboard for other ERASMUS activities or longer-lasting bilateral partnerships.
Specifically these actions cover:
- Student mobility for placements: Enterprises can benefit from students' education, knowledge and competences by offering placements from three to twelve months to the students from one of the other 30 participating countries. Enterprises proposing student placements may directly work with sending higher education institutions or may address themselves to an authorised consortium that manages those placements. To be recognised, a consortium needs an ERASMUS consortium placement certificate.
- Staff mobility for teaching: Company employers may be invited by a university or other higher education institution abroad to teach and to pass on their experience outside the academic world.
- Staff mobility for training: Teaching and other staff of a higher education institution may receive training at an enterprise abroad. They may equally use their stay to initiate cooperation projects under ERASMUS or to promote student placements.
- Cooperation: Enterprises or their representative associations can participate in ERASMUS multilateral projects covering topics such as curriculum development, higher education-enterprise cooperation or academic and structural networks. Their knowledge of the labour market, industry requirements and outside views can contribute to help the higher education sector innovate, open up and modernise.
- Preparatory visits: Enterprises may benefit from preparatory visits to organise student placements and staff mobility and to establish placement consortia.
Enterprises can find information on how to get involved in individual mobility actions by contacting the National Agency for ERASMUS in their country. As for information on participation in cooperation activities, enterprises may contact the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency in Brussels.
Please note that the action called "ERASMUS for Young Entrepreneurs" is not part of the ERASMUS programme but an action run by the European Commission's Enterprise Directorate-General
