The International Mobility department is responsible for promoting the international mobility of students and staff, and for providing the services associated with this objective.
The department’s main result areas are safeguarding intake quality and diversity, facilitating an international experience for all VU students, either at home or abroad, and creating an optimal international learning environment to enhance student success. We aim to strengthen the connection between students and their degree programmes, to attract the best and most diverse group of students to VU Amsterdam and to give as many VU students as possible an international study experience, either right here at home or by going abroad.
The International Mobility department contributes to this with a range of products and services:
- Degree Mobility: admission of students for VU Amsterdam’s English-taught programmes. In addition to assessing degree certificates and issuing admission decisions, this unit focuses, in collaboration with International Marketing, on improving intake quality and diversity, and on helping international students settle in by introducing them to the Dutch educational culture, the VU community and their VU degree programme.
- Credit Mobility: managing contracts with high-quality European and non-European partner universities and institutes for incoming and outgoing credit mobility. In addition to contributing to the diversification of the VU student body, this unit is committed to offering as many students as possible the opportunity to gain an international experience abroad.
- International Services: for international mobility to be successful, it is crucial that students are well supported. To ensure that this is the case, this unit supports students as much as possible in finding affordable housing in and around Amsterdam, acts as the “recognized sponsor” towards IND for incoming students and staff and takes care of the immigration procedures, and ensures that prospective students receive extensive information about scholarship opportunities to promote intake quality and diversity.
- Analysis and Advice: this team conducts data-driven analyses and evaluations of IM's services and projects, provides advice for policy and decision-making on international mobility at all levels, and promotes knowledge sharing within our department.
- International Recruitment & Student Experience: by developing comprehensive communication strategies we aim to engage admitted international students. The team creates compelling content tailored to the international target group and actively participates in various networks to ensure an efficient flow of information.
