Erasmus+

Erasmus+ provides students of European universities with the unique opportunity to gain international experience in their studies and improve their position in the labour market. In addition, the new programme promotes equal opportunities to study abroad by providing supplementary grants for students with special needs.

Students can apply for two types of grants:

• Erasmus+ exchange study grants allow students to take courses at one of UI's partner universities, which are evaluated for credits upon return to Iceland. 
• Erasmus+ traineeship grants allow students to work on specific projects, related to their studies, at a company or institution. 

Students participating in Erasmus+ exchange studies or traineeships may apply for an Erasmus+ disability or illness grant to meet additional costs.

All employees, both academic staff and other employees at UI, have the opportunity to take part in Erasmus+ either by teaching or training abroad in a partner institution or enterprise for two to sixty days. An Erasmus+ grant is awarded to successful applicants that is intended as a contribution to travel and living costs while teaching or training abroad. Training may include participating in courses, job shadowing or organized visits to a partner university.  

Faculties may also apply for funding for inviting staff from enterprise to come to UI and teach.

Erasmus+ grants within Europe

Erasmus+ grants outside Europe

Erasmus+ Policy Statement 2021-2027

The core values of the University of Iceland; academic freedom, equality and professionalism provide the foundation for UI’s ambitions and participation in the international academic community.

The international strategy is embedded in the main strategy of the UI, with focus on international mobility of students and staff and on international research collaboration. International collaboration enhances both research and education. It puts the university in a better position to recruit the best researchers and students, and secure national and international research funding. 

The UI strategy centres on a progressive vision for teaching and learning that will prepare students for participation in society. One of the goals stated is to increase the opportunities and encourage students to participate in international mobility. Study programmes should be organized to facilitate students to go on exchange as part of their studies. The University attracts increasingly international staff, both short term and for faculty positions which also leads to increased international exposure of the local students and academic environment.

The UI is an international research university and collaborates closely with universities and research institutions all over the world. Our partners are diverse, reflecting the different needs and priorities of our students and staff. In recent years UI has put increased emphasis on strengthening collaboration with leading research universities at institutional level in addition to strategic partners at faculty level. 

UI also participates in several networks of universities that have mutual interests and a shared vision, including the Aurora network of universities, a network of research-intensive universities deeply committed to match academic excellence with societal relevance. 

The UI has been an active participant in the Erasmus programme since 1992. The involvement of the UI in the programme has been a vital component of the internationalisation of the university. The UI has since that time evolved from being a university offering mainly undergraduate education to becoming an international research university offering strong Masters’ and Doctoral education with significantly increased research output especially in international research collaboration.

The UI is strongly committed to adhering to the ECHE fundamental principles. We aim to respect in full the principles of non-discrimination, transparency and inclusion set out in the Erasmus Programme. To ensure equal and equitable access and opportunities to current and prospective participants from all backgrounds, paying particular attention to the inclusion of those with fewer opportunities. We strive to ensure full automatic recognition of all ECTS credits gained during mobility. 

We ensure that selection procedures for mobility activities are fair, transparent, coherent and documented, and we have all work procedures available. The UI publishes an updated course catalogue on the website by March 1 each year, or well before the time that students need to select their courses. We provide active support and assistance to both outgoing and incoming students, regarding studies, insurance, visas and study permit, housing and more. 

We strive to ensure the quality of services for students and to integrate incoming students to the university community. We provide Mentors for incoming students, and the University provides financial support for employing an International Officer at the Student Council, that works closely with the staff of the IO.

For staff we support that they are given recognition for their teaching and training activities undertaken during the mobility period. We plan to work with the HR department on inclusion of recognition of Erasmus training period in career development. 

The UI is looking forward to the continued participation in the next Erasmus programme and envisages that the ambitious goals and vision that are put forward in the Erasmus programme for 2021-2027 will aid the UI even further in our own institutional internationalisation and modernisation strategy. 

The UI has ambitions to participate in most types of cooperation projects for higher education within the Erasmus programme, as it has done continuously since 1992.

The Erasmus+ Key Action 1 (KA1) – Learning mobility – the mobility of higher education students and staff will continue to be the largest part of our projects. This will cover all fields of KA1 mobility activities, student mobility for studies and for traineeship and staff mobility for training and for teaching. The UI has participated in these Erasmus mobility types since 1992 so the practice is well established and recognized within the university both for students and staff. We will continue to strengthen the connections and partnerships we have made in Europe throughout the next programme. Erasmus+ student and staff mobility is the backbone of our institutional strategy for internationalisation. The widening of the Erasmus program to the International Dimension has added a new element to our internationalization and the UI has participated since it was launched, with increased participation and involvement from a larger group from within our university every year.

The UI puts great emphasis on quality of mobility, transparency, the promotion and support for mobility (before, during and after), inclusion of underrepresented students and full recognition of credits. We have taken the first steps towards full participation in the EWP (Erasmus Without Paper) initiative and encouragement from the European level has pushed the university to adopt new online solutions and will continue to do so in the near future. We are continuously looking for ways to encourage more student and staff to participate in KA1 mobility and are optimistic that simpler procedures following the introduction of the EWP will lower the threshold for new participants. The new opportunities in the future KA1 programs, shorter periods, virtual mobility and blended mobility are also expected to attract more participants.

The Erasmus+ Key Action 2 (KA2) cooperation among organisations and institutions:
•    Partnerships for cooperation and exchanges for practices
The UI participation in KA2 projects has been a valuable asset for setting up international collaborative projects in specific areas. We continue to see the added value in participating in these types of collaborative projects to develop areas that need to be strengthening in compliance with our institutional strategy.

•    Partnerships for Excellence – European Universities
The leadership of UI expressed great interest in participating in the European Universities initiative, and the UI is a participant in a proposal submitted for the 2nd call of European University Alliance under the name of Aurora Alliance. We have high expectations that participation in a European Alliance will aid the UI tremendously in achieving the goal of the European Education Area and developing a European approach with increased cooperation and mobility at a scale not currently possible. The vision of a transnational, multi-campus network and collaboration with external stakeholders will add a new dimension to European collaboration. 

•    Partnerships for Excellence – Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degrees.
We envision that the UI will participate in these types of projects in the new Erasmus programme, as has been done previously. The UI has joint master’s programs with several universities, and the Erasmus Mundus adds a new dimension where clearer goals of collaboration align well with our institutional strategy.

•    Partnerships for Innovation
Innovation is one of the biggest emphasis of the institutional strategy for UI and many opportunities are seen in applying and participating in projects on partnerships in innovation to achieve our objectives of increased innovation in all aspects of work at the university. 

Erasmus+ Key Action 3 (KA3) – support to policy development and cooperation – the UI has participated as partners in two KA3 funded projects; Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education in Europe I & II. Led by University of Groeningen. Participating in European projects is useful to advance and develop certain areas of excellence and expertise in the HE sector, both for the UI as an individual HEI but also at the national level. The UI sees many possibilities in participating in future KA3 projects to support policy development.

The impact of the participation of the Erasmus program so far at the UI is indisputable and has aided the university’s growth into an international research university. The UI has participated in the Erasmus programme since 1992. The exchanges started slowly with few students and staff moving in each direction but is has increased steadily since then, with some drop during the economic crisis in 2008 as could be expected. 
Although we still receive more students than we send out we have managed in recent years to reach more of a balance in our student exchange. However, we seem to have reached a plateau in the number of students that we are sending despite the active promotional efforts of the IO staff. The total is about 2.5% of all students. 

The impact among our students, in addition to having the opportunity to grow as a person and attain intercultural skills is that our students have the opportunity to seek specialization in their study fields and to have the opportunity to take a wider variety of courses, and access to research infrastructures not locally available making them stand out once they enter the labour market or apply for graduate school. There is great overall satisfaction reported by the participants, both students and staff.

The UI plans to take steps to reduce mobility obstacles and induce mobility growth in the new funding period. The plan will further increase the mobility of students, administrative staff as well as academics in KA1 activities, through our continuous promotional means, increased support by the University leadership through a stronger message in the next UI strategy and simpler application process through digitalisation of administrative processes.

Some obstacles will have been lifted by means taken to simplify and digitalise administrative procedures through the European Student Card initiative. By focusing on and enabling more sustainable international cooperation, with virtual and blended mobility, we will undoubtedly manage to attract more students and staff especially concerned about climate change who are looking for more environmentally friendly ways of internationalisation. These more flexible mobility formats and innovative ways of teaching and learning will be attractive to students in our opinion. Smoother automatic recognition of periods abroad will also be attractive. 

Short-term mobility for doctoral candidates will no doubt be of interest to our students. We encourage international collaboration during PhD studies, and that students spend a period at another university or research institution with a co-advisor on their PhD thesis, experience international environment in their study field (UI is quite small so larger exposure is definitely beneficial), acquire specific training, knowledge and skills that they will not otherwise get by only staying at UI. In addition, establishing valuable contacts in their scientific field in Europe, opening up collaborative opportunities and opportunities to find postdoctoral positions is also very important. 

At the UI there has been greater interest from the administrative staff than academic staff in the Erasmus staff mobility grants. That could be partially explained by the fact that most academic staff members have other research grants that can be used for travel, and their interest is often more focused on attending scientific conferences and presenting their own research, rather than being guest lecturers or job shadowing. We would like to encourage and open the dialogue on linking staff mobility and HR policies and recognition. The dialogue with supervisors of priorities of targeted mobility are also of interest, where staff could learn best practices of specific areas within their work, but also areas that are important to our University as a whole, such as environmentally friendly practices and digitalization. 

Looking at mobility actions complementarity with other Erasmus+ actions: The KA1 in E+ programme 2021-2027 with focus on multidimensional mobility offers such as blended programmes, combining short term physical mobility and a virtual component will align well with our goals of internationalisation at the UI. We will exploit these new possibilities to offer new forms of mobility and reach out to students for whom traditional student mobility/traineeship has proven to be less suitable. We are also interested in using training opportunities for staff, exploring staff mobility options that will support multiple goals of the UI, i.e. not only personal goals. There are also many opportunities in increasing the involvement in cooperation projects under the KA2 action. We have plans increase the awareness of the opportunities in these projects by setting up more support and advertising in collaboration with the Research & Innovation Division at the UI and the Erasmus National Agency.

There is room for growth in the numbers that participate in the Erasmus programme at the UI. We believe strongly that the new elements that are being introduced in the new programme 2021-2027 will help in increasing the numbers, especially the availability of shorter mobility periods, the aim of high mobility within the European Universities Alliance, of virtual mobility and blended mobility will all work towards the goal of increasing the number of students and staff that will gain international experience within the Erasmus programme. We are therefore confident in that we will meet our target of widening participation. 

Erasmus+ Charter for Higher Education 2021-2027

Erasmus+ Programme Guide