Student mobility and credit transfer

The four best examples of this type of aid are the Fulbright US Student Program, the Chevening Scholarship in the United Kingdom, Australian Scholarships and the financial component of the EU’s Erasmus program, all of which were designed to promote global mobility. [...] The number for university students has risen somewhat over the past decade, but for most of the past 20 years the proportion of students studying out of province has remained within the range of eight to ten per cent. [...] In a traditional four-year degree, one-quarter of the total required credits are available in a typical year of study, and modules, each with a certain number of credits attached, are designed to enable a student who successfully completes them to obtain the desired number of credits at the end of the year (Bekhradnia 2004). [...] This goal is difficult to square with that of total mutual credit recognition, since the nature of many niche programs is that they are seamless and integrated; thus, recognition of credits (partial credentials) from other institutions may undermine both the educational content of the program in question and lessen the uniqueness of the credential it confers. [...] These agreements provide a series of signals to the student (e.g., courses which are acceptable at a specific university as the first two years of a given degree program) and the institution (e.g., the understanding that a student transferring from a specific two-year college program will have successful completed certain courses necessary to a given program at the university).