Surely, everyone has heard of the European Union’s non-commercial student and faculty exchange program called Erasmus. We won’t describe the program itself in this article, but we would like to share a very interesting fact related to its name and the Netherlands.
The program is named after the Dutch philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam, who dedicated his life to promoting a universal concept of wisdom, which he considered the key to understanding among people.
A humanist, philologist, and writer, Erasmus traveled extensively, studying and teaching in France, England, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium. Upon his death, he left his entire estate to the University of Basel.
That is why the first European student mobility program was named after this remarkable, widely traveled European scholar, who was born in the territory of what is now the Netherlands in the mid-15th century. Thanks to Erasmus grants, since 1987 more than a million European students have had the opportunity to study in different countries across Europe.
