Students from backgrounds that are underprivileged in one way or another stand a lower chance to have an internationalisation experience – although research shows that these students on average profit more from such experience when properly coached.
A German study from some time ago underlines this point: In a discussion paper The Social Selectivity of International Mobility among German University Students of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Claudia Finger analyses data from the German National Association of Student Affairs (Deutsches Studentenwerk) on two cohorts (1997 and 2006) and finds a) that social background is an important obstacle to study abroad and b) that this has not weakened, but rather increased after the introduction of the Bologna reforms.
