A few days ago, ACA signed the contract for a new EU project, on state grants and loans. The project is funded under the Accompanying Measures of the Lifelong Learning Programme and will span the period from October 2012 to September 2013. ACA will have the pleasure to partner in this endeavour with the Deutsches Studentenwerk.

The first objective of the project is to create a comparative overview and propose a typology for so-called state grants and loans. The particular emphasis will be on the ‘portability’ of these study funding instruments, i.e. on the possibilities to use them not only for domestic study, but also for study abroad. The project’s second objective is to evaluate the ‘quantitative importance’ of state grants and loans for overall study abroad. In the public perception, study abroad is almost entirely funded by the Erasmus Programme (as well as some smaller national schemes). However, there are indications that - in some countries, at any rate – the number of students studying abroad with the support of a public grant or loan far exceeds Erasmus numbers. By identifying the correct volumes, and comparing them with statistics from Erasmus and the UOE database, we will be able to assess, for the first time ever, the exact contribution of state grants and loans to outgoing mobility in the 31 countries covered by the study (EU-27 and EFTA-4: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland).

In another new project, ACA is the junior partner of StudyPortals, an Eindhoven-based young and dynamic company, which will develop an online platform for higher education institutions and national agencies to promote their programmes abroad. The service will be interactive, offering visitors of the platform online counselling.

ACA projects