Non-european mobility at higher education institution. A case study from Sapienza University of Rome

The promotion of mobility among students and academic staff is one of the main objective of the Bologna Process, a series of ministerial meetings and agreements between European countries put in place to ensure comparability in the standards and quality of higher-education qualifications. According to the last Erasmus+ Annual Report (2019), almost 10 million people enjoyed the Erasmus programme during the last three decades and the increase of this phenomenon has been recorded in all of the European countries. However, it is important to underline that this number includes not only all the students that experienced a mobility period in Europe but also those who have taken advantage of the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility (ICM), a specific programme which aims to promote the international mobility of European students and staff to and from non-EU partner countries. Indeed, the mobilities to countries across Europe are a more recent initiative and, starting from 2015, more and more students and academic staff spent part of their academic path in another higher education institution around the world. In addition to this programme, other specific programmes referring to non-EU mobility are double degrees and bilateral agreements, an agreement signed by two universities which choose to become partners in order to achieve common specific aims related to students' exchange periods. For this reason, the aim of this contribution is to focus the attention particularly on non-European mobilities during the last academic year (2018/2019) in one of the most important university in Europe, that is Sapienza University of Rome. The data analyzed will take into consideration demographic variables, mobility variables and academic career‘s variables.