INTERNATIONAL MOBILITY OF STUDENTS AND ITS POTENTIAL EFFECT ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF UNIVERSITY GRADUATES

The globalisation and integration processes greatly facilitate the international mobility of university students. This paper examines the trends in students' mobility within the EU and its potential effect on employment of university graduates in the EU countries. We assume that more international experience of students during their studies could improve their practical skills which could further lead to better employability of graduates on average. We are focused especially on countries' openness to the international mobility of students expressed as the sum of students arriving in the country and those studying in another EU country. The paper is mostly empirically oriented using panel data for 28 EU member states in the period 2000-2012. We firstly applied fixed effects regression in order to capture potential short-run effects. In the second stage we used panel cointegration techniques in order to test potential causality between selected variables in the long-run. We found relatively strong evidence that the openness of the country with respect to students' exchange (both inward and outward) could have a positive effect on employment of graduates. This seems to be especially true in the long run. Thus, the international mobility of students seems to be beneficial in respect of increasing overall employment rate of university graduates in the long-run.