International student mobility is an important dimension of university internationalisation, offering students opportunities to broaden their academic perspectives, develop intercultural skills and engage with different educational environments. At the University of Salerno, incoming and outgoing student mobility reflects the university’s connections with institutions across Europe and beyond, as well as the diversity of academic fields involved in international exchange.
Incoming Students: A Diverse International Community
The incoming student data highlight the University of Salerno’s role as a destination for students from a wide range of countries. Spain represents the largest group of incoming students, with 262 students, followed by Germany with 47, Poland with 27 and France with 26. Other countries contributing to the international student community include Turkey (20), Kazakhstan (17), Romania (15), Czechia and Portugal (12 each), and Hungary (7).
The geographical distribution extends well beyond these main partner countries. Students also come from countries including Greece, Finland, Croatia, Lithuania, Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Serbia, Argentina and Mexico, illustrating the broad international reach of the university’s mobility activities.
The incoming student population also spans a wide range of academic disciplines. Law accounts for 44 students, while business and administration programmes represent another prominent area. Pharmacy, language studies, medicine, education and political sciences are also well represented. Engineering and information and communication technologies feature prominently, alongside humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences.
This disciplinary variety demonstrates how international mobility connects different areas of the university, providing opportunities for students with diverse academic interests and backgrounds.
Outgoing Students: Expanding Academic Horizons Abroad
Outgoing mobility offers University of Salerno students the opportunity to pursue part of their academic journey at partner institutions abroad. The destination data show strong links with Spain, which accounts for 217 outgoing students, followed by France (42), Portugal (37) and Germany (47). Other destinations include Poland (13), the Netherlands (10), Greece and Sweden (9 each), Belgium (7) and Czechia (6).
Other programmes involved in outgoing mobility include Economics, Communication Sciences, Engineering, Law, Philosophy, Archaeology, Mathematics and Political and International Relations Science. Mobility opportunities are therefore distributed across a broad spectrum of disciplines, from the humanities and social sciences to medicine, engineering and technology.
The course-level data also provide insights into gender representation. Among incoming students, the recorded figures amount to 293 female students and 198 male students. In outgoing mobility, the corresponding figures are 227 female students and 189 male students.
The distribution varies across academic fields. Language-related programmes show a particularly strong female presence, especially in Foreign Languages and Cultures and Modern Languages and Literatures among outgoing students. Conversely, several computing and engineering programmes show a higher number of male students. Other areas, including business and economics, bring together students with more balanced gender distributions.
These differences reflect the varied composition of the academic programmes involved in international mobility.
Student Mobility as a Driver of Internationalisation
Taken together, the incoming and outgoing data illustrate the many dimensions of international mobility at the University of Salerno. The university welcomes students from a diverse range of countries and academic backgrounds, while its outgoing students benefit from opportunities to study and engage with partner institutions abroad.
Beyond the numbers, international mobility contributes to the exchange of knowledge, the development of intercultural competencies and the strengthening of academic relationships. These experiences are an important part of building a more connected and internationally oriented university community.
By supporting mobility across disciplines and destinations, the University of Salerno continues to contribute to the internationalisation of higher education and to the development of a shared European academic space.
