A smile better than Copenhagen

Students from Europe choose Aarhus over Copenhagen for their student exchange

Copenhagen may be Denmark's largest city, but it's not the one preferred by foreign students using the Erasmus programme, according to EU Commission stats. That distinction goes to The City of Smiles, aka Aarhus.

Erasmus is a student exchange programme offered to students who wish to study within Europe but outside their own borders. There are 33 countries to choose from. Apart from paying the student’s school fees, the Erasmus programme also gives the student a monthly allowance of 1,900 kroner.

The EU Commission ranked the top 100 schools in terms of Erasmus programme enrolment. In first place for preferred destinations was Spain, with 39,300 students. Denmark failed to make the top twenty, but the University of Aarhus clocked in at number 25. This put it well ahead of the two other Danish schools on the list, as the University of Copenhagen came in at number 72, while Copenhagen Business School made it on to the list by a hair’s breadth at number 100.

More than 250,000 students took advantage of the Erasmus programme last year, including 3,315 Danes. From 2014-2020 the budget has increased 40 percent to 108 billion kroner, allowing even more students to use the exchange programme. The aim is to have four million students study abroad through Erasmus.




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