International Tertiary Students: Is Rome an Attractive Destination?,

The mobility of international students has increased significantly in recent decades thanks to globalisation of culture and the economy, and to more efficient and economical communication systems which allow them to stay in contact with those back home. This phenomenon, largely ignored by past research, has gained greater attention from academics and policy makers since it has been linked, partially due to the consequences of the international economic crisis, to unbalanced movement of the highly skilled between the more economically developed countries as well. To better understand the phenomenon of mobility of international students, a survey was conducted on the foreign students at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy (Uniroma1), one of the oldest universities in Europe, and with 140,000 students, the largest. The method used for this was a quantitative analysis which compared the situation in Rome and in Italy with the most important universities around the world. This analysis was performed via a survey of one hundred students, followed up by ten in-depth interviews. The results showed that SUoR was chosen for cultural reasons, the importance of Rome in world history, due to the presence of a large immigrant community and therefore for its cosmopolitan character, as well as due to the low university fees, which are the same for Italian and foreign students.