STUDENT MOBILITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE EUROPEAN UNION : APPLICATION OF ROY MODEL TO SKILL MIGRATION

Abstract

The international migration of skilled workers is becoming an increasingly important issue in the globalized economy. In a world of rapid technological changes, skilled workers are a primary resource for maintaining a competitive and sustainable economy. Accordingly, higher education policy in recent years in major industrialized countries has more visibly reflected their national economic plans. In the United States, the contribution of higher educction to economic growth has been a major rationale for the state funding of postsecondary system (Becker and Lewis 1992, Hornbeck and Salamon 1991) . In recent years, European countries have placed even more significant emphasis on their human resources strategies to realize regional economic growth. A well-known example is the Bologna Process, a series of higher education schemes that aim at creating a European Higher Education Area. Particularly after the Lisbon Treaty in 2000, the Bologna Process has been closely associated with issues of economic growth, employment policy and social planning (Furlong 2005), what Roeger calls “knowledge investment” in the EU (Roeger et al. 2009). The process is still a work in progress, and it is certainly too early to evaluate the effects of the educational planning on their economy. Nonetheless, the major features of the Bologna Process such as the promotion of skill mobility and quality assurance for the postsecondary system have been steadily evolving and diffusing. One of the most influential US scholars in the study of postsecondary education, Clifford Adelman, says that “the core features of the Bologna Process have sufficient momentum to become the dominant global higher education model within the next two decades” (Adelman 2009). The mobility enhancement and quality assurance for the Bologna Process derive specific action plans including the provision of mobility grants, the development of transferable credits and degrees, and the establishment of reference points based on which universities in the EU design comparable curriculum. The combination of these actions is a well-designed approach that potentially generates significant synergetic effects. Mobility enhancement facilitates comparability between credits and degrees, which in turn facilitates mobility. In order to Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies 42 (2010), pp.1-9. C Hitotsubashi University