Erasmus Exchange Program

Hello, I am Professor Engin Can. I teach mathematics at the Faculty of Technology, Department of Engineering Basic Sciences. I am also the coordinator of our university for International Relations, Erasmus, Farabi, Mevlana and I work at the coordinatorship who is responsible for foreign students. The Erasmus exchange program is determined by the agreements we have made between institutions and universities, which all our students, academic and administrative staff can benefit from. It is granted by the European Union and the European Commission, and, it is a consortium that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Turkish National Agency are responsible for in Turkey. Within this consortium, we send our students to internships and learning programs, and our staff, both the administrative and academic, to teaching and training programs. This is an exchange program limited from 2 days to 60 days. All grants here are sent to us by the European Union through the National Agency. However, what is important here is the extent of our institutions’ agreements, consortiums and bilateral protocols. The number of students on the basis of departments is very important. Although we have requested for more, the number of students, academic staff and administrative staff are determined by the National Agency. A budget is sent to us accordingly. We are obliged to distribute this budget to our students and staff in an optimum way. As I said, our students and staff benefit from Erasmus. Although there is a minimum 2.20 GPA requirement for students who want to study or do an internship within the scope of Erasmus, it is advantageous for them to have their grades higher than this score. Because if 100 people applied to a quota of 20 students, they must have good grades in order to be included in that group of 20 students. In addition, we conduct an internationally recognized English exam such as the Higher Education Institutions Foreign Language Exam (YÖKDİL), Foreign Language Proficiency Exam (YDS) or TOEFL. For these, there are equivalence scores determined by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK), and we also accept them. All of this information is already available on our website “erasmus.subu.edu.tr". Students can see all of them there, detailed information is already available there. We look to see if the student has taken a preparatory class on language proficiency or whether he or she has a language certificate from an internationally recognized institution. If the student does not have a certificate and wants to take the exam, we take the grade point average before the selection evaluation and accept the applications and then we do an English exam. This exam is an exam in the form of an 80-question test prepared by YÖK just like YÖKDİL and YDS. The score and grade point average obtained from this exam are added up and divided into two, that is, their average is calculated. Students are placed in a ranking accordingly, our quota is ranked from top to bottom according to the number of students who want to benefit from education and internship, and after the budgeting our students are sent abroad. Our students and staff do not pay any fees to benefit from Erasmus. On the contrary, they receive a grant. Each university has rules determined by the evaluation commission of National Agency. Each university can also determine what these are. For example, in accordance with the decision taken by the Erasmus Selection and Evaluation Commission, our students are granted 1 semester for learning mobility and 4 months for internship mobility. However, this grant amount varies according to the destination country. Students can see these from the detailed budgeting and grant charts on erasmus.subu.edu.tr. There are countries in the first group and countries in the second group. For example, the Scandinavian countries are the countries with the highest grant. Grants of close countries to Turkey such as Bulgaria and Greece are slightly lower. These amounts are different for learning mobility and internship.
Since we started the Erasmus program with around the late 2018/ early 2019 Erasmus conditions, there are some differences between the grant amounts of that period and the amount of grants to be paid to students and academic staff as of 2021. You can find the changed table of all education grant amounts, internship amounts and grant amounts to be paid to the staff for both periods, that is until 2020 and after 2021, on the homepage of erasmus.subu.edu.tr. Within the scope of the Erasmus exchange program, our students benefit from education and internship mobility. The table of how much grant they will receive in education and internship mobility has changed for the 2021-2027 contract period. Some periods have been increased a little more than it had been until 2020. Internships are limited to 4 months, and the studies to 1 semester but students can do a 1-year internship and study for 2 semesters if they want. We mentioned that 50% of the grade point average and 50% of the English language proficiency score are taken in the score in order to make our students benefit from Erasmus program, but we also have students who may get a plus point. For example, these can be disabled people, relatives of martyrs or people who really need it financially. In order not to victimize these students, we have the right to add 10 points in some cases and 5 points in some cases, which are recommended by the National Agency and determined by our selection and evaluation commission. Thus, by giving them a little more points, we may enable them to benefit from this right. Until the 2020, Erasmus - I just mentioned the contract - was only valid for European Union countries except for Switzerland. Now, it has become an exchange program that can be done all over the world, from the 2021 period onwards. You can now use up to 30% of our budget not only for the European Union, but for all over the world from Japan to America. As long as our university's Erasmus coordinator, unit coordinators and faculty coordinators cooperate, and with your support, we can make agreements with other institutions - other universities - but you do not need to go to a university for internship mobility. For this, we provide grants to you. We, as Sakarya University of Applied Sciences, have a very good application. We provide training in the 7+1 model and you can do this +1 abroad with Erasmus if you want. You also have the following right about internship: You graduated, received your diploma, but you applied before you graduated and met the required conditions in February or in March. In this case, after receiving your diploma, you have the right to benefit from Erasmus internship mobility for 12 months. Since we are a university of applied sciences, I would like to emphasize that our priority is the internship and that we provide all kinds of support to our students in this regard. There are institutions in Germany and Austria with which we make internship agreements under a partnership. We do our best to direct our students there. I wish success to the friends who will choose our university and thank them for choosing us. We look forward to getting to know them and we are ready to send them abroad.