[HN Gopher] The Erasmus Network
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The Erasmus Network
Author : pantalaimon
Score : 75 points
Date : 2023-05-10 17:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (zarasophos.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (zarasophos.net)
| expertentipp wrote:
| Meh, I didn't qualify as a STEM student. Meantime all female
| colleagues studying "Spanish" and "Italian" had parties and sex
| of their lives in Valencia, Granada, Milan, Barcelona, Sicily,
| and others. For me the Erasums could be shut down. Don't even
| remember me this program.
| netrus wrote:
| Hm, the technical university I studied at (in a STEM program)
| has dozens of Erasmus partner universities, including programs
| in Sevilla, Milan, Istanbul and of course Barcelona. Erasmus is
| definitely open to all fields - maybe your university just had
| a bad international office?
| expertentipp wrote:
| Whatever, doesn't matter, too late.
| spyremeown wrote:
| Map is not loading for me. Maybe it got hugged to death?
| paulusthe wrote:
| Erasmus is under heralded but an incredible program. Similar to
| the scholar himself.
| lamp987 wrote:
| I liked Erasmus, it was the easiest way to get girls as a uni
| student by far.
| toomim wrote:
| For those new to this (like me), Erasmus seems to be a non-profit
| that facilitates studying abroad: https://www.esn.org
|
| Can anyone else explain more?
| arikaun wrote:
| Former ESNer here. The Erasmus Student Network is a volunteer-
| run organization in 100+ Cities all over Europe. It works like
| this: You go on Erasmus to a foreign city and you find an ESN
| chapter there. Among other things, the ESN people there will
| organize events for you to participate in, help you get a
| mobile phone SIM card, a bank account and organize parties to
| mix Erasmus students with local students.
|
| In my city I organized movie nights inside of the university
| and showed Austrian movies with english subtitles (e.g. Wolf
| Haas movies or "Muttertag") so foreign exchange students could
| learn about Austria and Austrian humour. There was a welcome
| party at the beginning of every semester in a big club with
| 600+ people and a goodbye party at the end of every semester.
| In between there were movie nights, museum vists, skiing trips,
| wine road trips, city tours, pub crawls and lots of other stuff
| to do and get to know Graz and Austria.
|
| All of this is organized by volunteers (ESN members) who do
| this in their free time. There are city chapters of ESN (ESN
| Graz, ESN Vienna etc.) and above them a country chapter (ESN
| Austria). ESN Austria is a platform where all the volunteers
| meet and exchange information and ideas and talk about what
| works and what doesn't for our students. ESN Austria organized
| a skiing trip every year where they booked whole hotel and
| hundreds of Erasmus students from all over Austria could go
| there and try out skiing for a few days. Participating was
| cheap for the Erasmus students because ESN people got sponsors
| on board (e.g. free Red Bull and lots of other stuff). ESN
| Austria also had a cooperation with an Austrian telco and if
| you were an Erasmus students and you come to our office during
| our office hours, we give you a free sim card and a cheap bank
| account. The telco and the bank would pay us a few EUR for
| every activated sim card and every opened bank account and
| since ESN is a non-profit that money would go right back to the
| students (e.g. subsidized museum trips and other cultural
| events). It's really a win-win-win situation for everyone.
|
| I was never on Erasmus but I was a volunteer for ESN both in my
| hometown and in our national chapter and due to this I got to
| know lots of amazing people, both volunteers and students,
| learned a lot, had a lot of fund and acquired a few skills that
| would turn out to be quite useful in my later life.
| gobip wrote:
| Erasmus is a common word in european language, meaning
| "exchange". Imagine you live in Paris, you're a French person,
| you will probably "go on an erasmus" during your studies. You
| will study abroad during one semester, in Berlin for example.
|
| In Europe, we also say "erasmus" for people who went abroad,
| outside the EU (USA for example). It's harder to go on an
| exchange in the USA as you have to translate your grades,
| everything is more expensive (no european health insurance,
| etc).
|
| Hope this helps.
| zulln wrote:
| Erasmus is a specific program that does exchanges within the
| EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Programme
|
| In Sweden, we only use that word to talk about exchange
| studies within that program. If someone mentions Erasmus, I
| would never, before reading your comment, even consider they
| might mean going to the USA.
|
| Not to disqualify your experience, it might very well be used
| like that in your country or language. I just thought it was
| a bit interesting.
| postalponed wrote:
| That reminds me that I did some visualisation of Erasmus data for
| a data-vis course in uni
|
| https://erasmus.robinfellinger.eu/
|
| Was quite fun playing around and exploring that dataset.
| goplayoutside wrote:
| Context: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Programme
| tristor wrote:
| When I was a digital nomad I enjoyed meeting folks from Europe
| everywhere I went that were on Erasmus. They always had created a
| little pocket of community and were welcoming to strangers.
| rozenmd wrote:
| I (an Australian) met my wife (French) while on Erasmus in the
| Netherlands - incredible opportunity for meeting people around
| the world.
| riffraff wrote:
| today is the tenth year anniversary of my wedding, with a wife
| I also met during my Erasmus.
|
| As someone once told me 15 years ago, the EU has had two great
| successes: the Erasmus program, and Ryanair.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| EU have a lot of nice things going, and one appreciate it
| more while outside EU ;-)
| tough wrote:
| Lol why ryanair?
| danijelb wrote:
| Another great success that didn't exist 15 years ago - no
| more roaming charges
| nice__two wrote:
| I'm convinced that the Erasmus programme (and it's not so
| serious counterparts such as AEGEE and IAESTE) contribute to
| lasting peace in Europe by marrying people between nations.
| luplex wrote:
| I found myself in there!
|
| I wonder if the US would benefit from providing a similar scheme
| of cross-country exchanges
| hatmatrix wrote:
| May be better to exchange students between city and rural
| schools.
| rerx wrote:
| There's the Fulbright program with bilateral exchanges with
| many countries. According to wikipedia.de, on average each
| German university or college sends 55 students in a year to the
| US with a Fullbright scholarship.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| I didn't do Erasmus, but I won a similar exchange program that
| brought me from the University of Granada to UC Irvine, where I
| met my now wife. Life changing experience.
| juujian wrote:
| The problem is that US universities charge exorbitant fees, and
| that creates a problem for exchange programs with (continental)
| European universities. American universities are mostly
| unwilling to waive fees for European students who are used to
| not paying any significant fees, and European universities are
| not going to pay for it on behalf of the students.
| riffraff wrote:
| AFAIR the US already partecipates in the Erasmus Mundus program
| johngladtj wrote:
| How in the world is it legal for that dataset to be freely
| available for anyone to download when it clearly contains
| uniquely identifiable personal information?
|
| I can literally identify multiple people!
|
| Why hasn't this data at the very least been aggregated in such a
| way that any random idiot like me can't just take a quick look
| and identify at least 2 people in less than 5 minutes?
|
| How is this in line with GDPR? Certainly the exceptions for
| statistics don't totally eliminate the requirement for them to
| minimize the data collection and publication to only fulfill the
| requirements.
|
| What legal basis do they have to make personal information of
| thousands of people freely available with no anonymization at
| all?
|
| What public benefit is there in making public the data for
| specific people, instead of non-uniquely identifiable buckets of
| people?
| Udo wrote:
| The map doesn't seem to work for me. What's the identifiable
| data like? Are there names? From the article it seemed it's
| just publicly-available city-to-city connection data.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| It's not identifying if you already knew they went from city A
| to city B.
|
| Yes, you might know which specific person took that journey,
| but you have prior knowledge.
| johngladtj wrote:
| How is that an excuse? GDPR doesn't make that distinction.
|
| The fact is I learned new personal information about someone
| else from this dataset. The fact that I already had some
| information about that person is no excuse.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| You need to explain it a bit further.
|
| What could you possible learn from the map you didn't
| already know before? The time they went and if they taught
| their native language their and similar stuff. Yeah, okay i
| see your point.
| johngladtj wrote:
| And the course they went to.
|
| All of those things are personal information subject to
| GDPR. I would certainly get in trouble if I collected
| information on the location of specific people and made
| it available, why don't they?
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Probably because that survey scheme predates the GDPR and
| nobody thought about it's conformity since.
| johngladtj wrote:
| Sounds like it's time for a fine then.
|
| What's 4% of the turnover of the EU?
| arlort wrote:
| The map is not loading for me (I assume it's a map) but how is
| it letting you identify multiple people?
| TheFragenTaken wrote:
| They (the students) probably accepted it, and signed an
| informed consent.
| tgv wrote:
| Then it would still be odd for the EU to publish the raw
| data.
| johngladtj wrote:
| I can assure you I didn't! The only forms I signed were the
| ones that I was required to sign in order to even go on
| Erasmus
| marbu wrote:
| I studied in the Netherlands as Czech Erasmus student about
| 12 years ago and I recall that one had to fill out a
| questionnaire about their experience and study during the
| exchange, and that the results were public for anyone to
| see[1], which included information about home and receiving
| institution, courses and so on. And people often consulted
| this database before submitting an application for their
| stay, so I would not say that they didn't know about it.
|
| And while it's likely that local legal conditions differs a
| bit and that it changed over time, I'm not surprised that
| such high level data are public.
|
| [1] https://erasmus-databaze.naep.cz/modules/erasmus/
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| >.. identify at least 2 people in less than 5 minutes?
|
| How did you identify two people from that data? have I missed
| something, I only see the following:
|
| HOMEINSTITUTION;COUNTRYCODEOFHOMEINSTITUTION;AGE;GENDER;NATIONA
| LITY;SUBJECTAREA;LEVELSTUDY;YEARSPRIOR;MOBILITYTYPE;HOSTINSTITU
| TION;COUNTRYCODEOFHOSTINSTITUTION;PLACEMENTENTERPRISE;COUNTRYOF
| PLACEMENT;ENTERPRISESIZE;TYPEPLACEMENTSECTOR;LENGTHSTUDYPERIOD;
| LENGTHPLACEMENT;SHORTDURATION;STUDYSTARTDATE;PLACEMENTSTARTDATE
| ;CONSORTIUMAGREEMENTNUMBER;ECTSCREDITSSTUDY;ECTSCREDITSPLACEMEN
| T;TOTALECTSCREDITS;SNSUPPLEMENT;TAUGHTHOSTLANG;LANGUAGETAUGHT;L
| INGPREPARATION;STUDYGRANT;PLACEMENTGRANT;PREVIOUSPARTICIPATION;
| QUALIFICATIONATHOST
| johngladtj wrote:
| Some universities have very low number of students going to
| other specific universities.
|
| Based on that alone I now know the unique ID of the people
| who went, and subsequently their start and end date, their
| gender, the courses they took, etc... Data that I would
| otherwise not know about them.
|
| This isn't a theoretical risk either, i legitimately
| identified someone else, and learned information I did no
| know about them from that dataset.
|
| Now we're friends and I'm sure they wouldn't mind me knowing
| what I learned, but it's nonetheless a violation.
| jkukul wrote:
| > Based on that alone I now know the unique ID of the
| people who went
|
| What unique ID do you mean? I can't find any unique ID type
| of column in any of the files published.
|
| > the courses they took
|
| In what file can you see the list of courses they took? I
| don't think it's shared anywhere.
|
| > and subsequently their start and end date, their gender
|
| > now we're friends and I'm sure they wouldn't mind me
| knowing what I learned
|
| You're friends and you just learned their gender? Sorry to
| be nitpicking like this. You had known their gender
| previously and that helped you identify them in the
| dataset, not the other way round?
| uncletaco wrote:
| Top comments are in line with a movie I saw where all the kids
| were in Erasmus and it seemed like the ideal way to hook
| up/connect with potential lovers one might not have connected
| with in any other context.
| Broussebar wrote:
| Are you talking about l'auberge espagnole[1]? This movie really
| promoted Erasmus in France at the time.
|
| [1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0283900/
| uncletaco wrote:
| Yeah that's the one. I have extremely vague memories of it
| but I've heard people talk about it a lot.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Erasmus was awesome. I remember getting a card as a lone American
| in Dresden.
|
| One difference I recall was that being a university student in
| Germany felt like a super-power compared to my time in the U.S.
| Everything seemed less expensive, subsidized travel and housing,
| lots of events hosted for you to meet people...
| yardie wrote:
| I lived abroad for a while. So I wasn't the right demographic for
| Erasmus being American. But I made so many friends who were
| participants. I ended meeting them at the same bars and cafes.
| Where students and just graduated, former students would meet and
| hangup.
|
| I didn't get to do any exchange programs just 4 years of my nose
| to grindstone. And I feel like I really missed out and messed up.
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