Internationalization of the Higher Education in Romania and EU Countries

Internationalization of higher education has become a part of the globalization process. In this paper we analyze the internationalization of the higher education in Romania and EU countries, identifying the forms of the internationalization, the main statistical indicators available to measure the process of internationalization. The figures presented in this article show that although Romania took some measures to support the internationalization and the number of foreign students started to increase especially after 2007, it has one of the lowest rates of student mobility among EU countries. The asymmetry ratio of students' mobility shows that Romania is not currently an attractive country for tertiary education. Only medicine seems to attract foreign students mainly because the tuition fee is much lower than in other European countries. The determinants of the student mobility were investigated through some simple regression models which showed that the GDP per capita and the ratio between the number of students and professors influence the decision to study abroad.