International Cooperation At the University Level. Obstacles and Challenges for Incoming Students and How To Eliminate Them

Abstract

This paper is about the cross-border cooperation between universities at the tertiary education level. The main issues presented in this work is related to students and the obstacles that they face with during applying, preparing and coming to any of the overseas education programs. The questions of how responsible people / entities from different universities can make things easier for incoming students and how universities can attract more participants to their international study programs, short-term cross-border events, etc. to support the internationalization and cross-border cooperation between universities / countries are described, additionally, the involved and responsible entities are identified. The research was done on the example of cooperation programs and activities of Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Germany. The paper shows the main barriers, which were identified during the interviews and conducted questionnaires among the Ukrainian students, who were/are interested in the study programs of Dortmund International University of Applied Sciences and Arts (FH Dortmund) and current / former students of university's international Master programs as European Master in Project Management and Master Program of Embedded Systems.