IAESTE Review Cover 01

Reciprocity of the Exchange
The IAESTE exchange programme is based on a
bilateral balanced exchange between members.
Most member countries attempt to maintain a
balance between outgoing and incoming
students but an exact bilateral balance is rarely
possible within any given year. Only long-term
balance is sought. This flexibility is needed to
support the proper allocation of places and the
selection of the appropriate students.
In 2003, 28 members and co-operating
institutions received more students than they
sent abroad and this benefited the rest. In total,
606 work experience places were involved or
13.1% of the total exchange.
It is traditional within IAESTE for members
with a higher Gross National Income per capita
(GNI) to receive more trainees than they send.
Strict reciprocity is not implemented with new
members in the early years which allow those
in developing countries and those from smaller
countries to gather support within their
country in order to develop the exchange.
Countries with a GNI per capita >12,000 US$
provided 87% of these places in 2003.
Profile of the student trainee
Age and gender balance of trainees varies little
from year to year but differs appreciably from
country to country.
Participation by male and female students
compared with previous years (%) is shown in
Table 5
TABLE 5 : Gender Balance
The percentage for individual members or cooperating
institutions varies from 0% to 67%.
The gender balance relates to the cultural and
educational traditions in the IAESTE countries.
The age of trainees in 2003 ranged from 20 to
28 years with the majority (87%) being 20 to 24
years old. The average age is just under 23 years
old.
Study fields: In 2003 65% of trainees were
students of engineering and technology. The
remaining 35% were divided between the
sciences, 18%; architecture and applied arts,
8%; agriculture, 3% and other fields of study,
6%. These figures are quite stable and change
only by a few percentage points from one year
to the next. (Table 6 and Figure 2)
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Engineering 67 67 63 67 65
Science
Architecture and
15 16 17 16 18
other Applied Arts 7 8 8 8 8
Agriculture 5 4 4 3 3
Others 6 6 9 6 6
TABLE 6 : Training Specialties (%) based on trainees
received 199-2003
Source: IAESTE Activity Reports 1999-2003
The first and largest group of engineering
students was itself composed of students from
the major faculties and sub groups. The largest
component was mechanical engineering 21%,
followed by computer science 16%, electrical
engineering 12%, electronic engineering and
telecommunications 9%. The remaining 21%
was distributed over miscellaneous engineering
specialities. For the first time in several years
the number of electronic engineering and
telecommunication placements has increased
and this is a very encouraging sign. There was
also a discernible rise in the number of physics
and biology traineeships on offer during 2003.
FIGURE 2 : Training Specialties based on trainees received 2003
Sub-dividing the engineering and science
groups gives us the breakdown between the
major participating disciplines. (Figure 3)
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