The Erasmus programme changes next year. The new programme for 2014-2020 makes more than one exchange period possible for a student. EILC language courses in rare languages such as Finnish will not be offered anymore.
The new Erasmus programme, named Erasmus+, was finally approved in the EU after difficult budget debates. As a conclusion, the the funds for raising the programme’s budget were found in the decreasing EU-budget. In the future, students will be able to go to universities outside Europe with the support of Erasmus-funding. In addition, it will be possible to do more than one exchange period.
For Finnish universities it is, of course, a loss to have the EILC intensive language courses focus only on the bigger languages. Nevertheless, the significance of this change might not be all too big, since Finnish universities also offer their exchange students other Finnish courses. In addition, Finnish exchange students will have more possibilities to study the big languages such as English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.
Erasmus+ also makes it possible to apply for a student loan guarantee from the EU when studying for a master’s degree in another EU-country. The maximal amount for the student loan guarantee is 12 000 euros for a one-year degree and 18 000 euros for a two-year degree.
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