European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and European Parliament President Antonio Tajani are leading the 30th anniversary celebrations for the Erasmus program at the European Parliament in Strasbourg today. To mark the occasion, the Commission is also launching a new Erasmus+ mobile application. Designed for students, vocational learners and participants in youth exchanges, the app will make young people's Erasmus+ experience easier.

I decided to embark in the Erasmus Programme in 2007-2008. I landed in Madrid, Spain, at the Universidad Pontificia de las Comillas, thanks to cross-border cooperation with my sending university Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy, studying business and marketing, and taking exams that could enhance my job employability, my Spanish speaking and writing skills, and the opportunity of having friends from all over the world. It was a fantastic experience.

British Universities have always been considered the global gold standard for quality but Brexit, in combination with reduced government funding, immigration policy, a changing 18 year-old demographic and the Higher Education and Research Bill, has created ‘A Perfect Storm’ for the sector. Universities are big business. Last year there were 2.24 million students at British universities.

The program allows students to study abroad without having to pay additional tuition at their host universities. Participants also don't have to worry about lost time: All credits earned while studying abroad with Erasmus transfer to their home institutions. Students also get small monthly stipends from their home universities, which depend on where they go and how much money their schools have available to support them while they're there.

Valentina Simeone hails from the city of Cagliari on the Italian island of Sardinia, but has spent the past six months a world away — in Iran. The 21-year-old became the first ever European Union exchange student to the Middle Eastern country, studying Farsi at Tehran University under the Erasmus Program, a EU student exchange program established in 1987. 

Expansion is in the pipeline for Erasmus, the European Union’s higher education exchange programme. Since its launch in 1987, more than three million students have benefited from the system, which supports cooperation between 33 countries.

The EU's student exchange scheme, Erasmus, has reached its 3 millionth participant since the programme was set up in 1987, the European Commission said on Monday (8 July). The statistics also show that in the academic year 2011-2012, more than 250,000 students went to study abroad or take up a job training for six months.