For the university students of Europe, the best thing to come out of the European Union is almost certainly the Socrates student mobility programme. Irish students, however, have the lowest participation in the programme in Europe.

Socrates is the successor to the Erasmus (European Action for the Mobility of University Students) programme, providing funding and supporting administration for almost 100,000 students each year to undertake part of their studies in another European country's university.

Happily the name Socrates came after the closure of the EU Acronym Office in Brussels.

With the establishment of Erasmus in the middle 1980s, university student mobility took off in Europe where before there was almost nothing, certainly nothing at undergraduate level.

For many generations our best graduates went to the US for postgraduate studies, and that was all there was that could be called student mobility. For the most part the European university scene was a closed shop.

The vast and enormously rich academic territory in the European universities provided little interconnection among its students. Most universities were regional in ethos, in their student and professorial communities, with their teaching exclusively in their own language.

This is all changing, and campuses everywhere in Europe have been transformed by visiting students bringing new life, languages and cultures to their student societies. For the students who travel, it is an enormously rewarding educational adventure, benefiting them academically and socially, and giving them a new perspective on their lives as Europeans.

One development from this is that many universities in those countries, whose native language is defined as a lesser-spoken one, such as Finland, Greece or Portugal, have begun a process of delivering some of their courses in English.

English is fast becoming the lingua franca of Europe, and understandably non-language students are reluctant to go to countries whose language they do not understand. Thus Ireland and Britain are very popular; it is joked in Brussels that after 800 years of occupation, the only good thing the British left in Ireland was their language!

Ireland's participation in the Socrates programmes has been well below the EU average. Data for the year 1998-1999 show that while 1,501 Irish students travelled out of Ireland, almost twice that number, 2,906, came from the EU to study here. The pattern of our student mobility out of Ireland is also significantly different from the rest of Europe.

The table shows that 36.7 per cent of Irish students travelling are from business studies disciplines compared to the EU average of 20.7 per cent. At the lower end of the table, it is seen that our professional faculties are considerably below the rest of Europe. Indeed some are hardly moving at all.

Engineering at 1.9 per cent compared to the EU average of 10.6 per cent, medicine at 1.6 per cent compared to the EU 3.5 per cent and teacher-training at 0.4 per cent against the EU 2.4 per cent must raise the question as to why we are so different in these disciplines.

Two possible reasons are suggested. First, undergraduate students will generally only travel away on such programmes if they are encouraged by their teachers and facilitated by the authorities in their universities, and such encouragement is not always there.

It seems that professional courses such as engineering or medicine in our universities tend to be more rigid in their curriculum structure than European or US universities, so that it is difficult to find a matching course in a European university where the student will get full credit for the time away.

Thus a year away on the Socrates programme often requires an extra year's study. This is understandably not an attractive proposition to either the students or the lecturers, and if there is no enthusiasm or encouragement from the lecturers or the faculty, the students just won't bother.

A second and perhaps more important reason relates to funding. It is expensive for a student to travel and spend a year in another European university, and the fun ding which the EU supplies covers only about 20 per cent of the cost. Irish students get the EU contribution only, which is €933 for a full academic year, or €139 a month for shorter visits.

In almost all other EU countries, the EU grant is supplemented by additional funds from regional and national governments and from the home university, but not here. Thus the Socrates student mobility programme in Ireland tends to be restricted to those who can afford it, with the student or his/her family paying the very substantial costs of study abroad.

It is, by the way, also well documented that students with disabilities from all countries, not just Ireland, do not participate in the Socrates programme at all because of the lack of financial and other supports which they need.

Socrates is a great programme and, more than any other coming out of Brussels, it will directly influence the future character of our Europe. The educational benefits of 100,000 students studying abroad each year is inestimable and must contribute to greater understanding and friendship throughout the EU.

With our supposed enthusiasm for all things European, it is a great pity that our students don't participate fully in this great European adventure.

Prof John Kelly is former registrar and professor emeritus, University College Dublin