Student mobility figures are usually taken at face-value as both goal and evaluation criterion when it comes to internationalizing higher education systems. This paper will reflect on the policies of both governments and higher education institutions to argue that they are in fact neither and will challenge the idea that student mobility per se is a valid objective on the competitive markets of the knowledge-based economy.

Cross-border exchanges have always existed and are necessary to the legitimacy of higher education. Two traditions have particularly shaped modern conceptions: the tradition of the Grand Tour, a trip across continental Europe that the young elite of 17th-18th century England would take after college to broaden their horizons, and, closer to us, international development aid. In many cases, both governments and institutions adhered to older mechanisms in the face of increased competition when the market became an agent in the internationalization processes of higher education. Study-abroad is reminiscent of the Grand Tour while international development attitudes have long underlain international strategies in many higher education systems. A discrepancy has appeared between agendas and the strategies to implement them, one that cannot be corrected by student mobility alone.

The discrepancy is apparent in that collaborations between universities are still often launched under the aegis of diplomatic representations abroad. Unless discussions and negotiations are conducted by full-fledged academics operating within diplomatic representations, and even then in many cases, the balance tends to shift towards diplomatic-relations-between-states preoccupations rather than towards true academic standards that may best position higher education institutions on a highly competitive market. This paper will argue that student mobility mechanisms are more political than academic, more multilateral than bilateral. ERASMUS, for example, has been immensely successful and has played a major political role in bringing together the youths of the different EU Member States but the outcome of the program in strictly academic term is less clear-cut. Are the students who made the choice not to enrol with ERASMUS really worse off than those who did? Study-abroad is a desirable experience, as is mobility in general, but, for lack of academic coherence, not necessarily one that best addresses societal needs or the career-oriented interests of participants.

Indiscriminately counting every individual that crosses a border to transit by a higher education institution as a way to measure the internationalization of a nation’s higher education system amounts to denying the very existence of a higher education market, to denying that world nations have specific characteristics and interests, that they need to negotiate specific agreements to meet the specific needs of their societies, including their own students. There is offer and demand is there is a market: counting incoming our outgoing students regardless of their levels, disciplines, objectives, registration situations, etc. makes no more sense than counting barrels (i.e. a mere commodity) regardless of their contents in other economic sectors: no coherent international strategies can be derived from such statistics. This paper will argue that, in the case of student mobility, the imperatives of political influence are still colliding with those the knowledge-based economy.