Two years ago, EFMD and its partners (Poznan University of Economics and Business, Haute Ecole de Namur-Liège-Luxembourg (HENALLUX), Kozminski University, Université Lyon 3 Jean Moulin, New Bulgarian University, Kauno University of Technology, and the Ukrainian Catholic University) launched EXIL, an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership project with the following objective: to improve the inclusion of exiled students in European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), particularly those affected by the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

At the time, European HEIs were responding to the arrival of exiled students through emergency measures. Their priority was clear: provide them with immediate support and ensure the continuity of their education.

Once this first response was in place, a more complex question emerged: how can these short-term responses be transformed into long-term institutional capability? This is the question the EXIL project explored. The project looked back at what institutions did under pressure and helped translate those experiences into a roadmap for the inclusion of exiled students in HEIs.

Students first

One of the simplest, but most important lessons from EXIL is that exiled students do not want to be solely defined as “refugee students” or “exiled students” and want to be seen simply as “students”. They need concrete forms of support, but they also want to be seen as students: young people with ambitions, academic interests, talents, and future plans, like any other international student.

That distinction is important because it changes how HEIs define student support. Rather than creating a separate category of students, with separate solutions and separate expectations, HEIs should ensure that existing support systems can respond to students whose paths into higher education have been disrupted.

A complex reality, not a single challenge

One of the most important insights from EXIL’s report on the needs, expectations and constraints of exiled students is that the challenges they face are rarely isolated. They are often cumulative, interrelated, and reinforce one another.

An exiled student often begins with difficulties in proving prior qualifications or navigating admission procedures. Language barriers affect both academic performance and daily interactions, while financial pressure and psychological stress accumulate in the background.

Support cannot be designed as a set of separate responses that do not relate to each other. If the challenges are connected, the support offered by HEIs also needs to be connected. From admissions to counselling, academic departments to external partners, everyone has a role to play — and needs to work together.

The support is often already there

In many cases, the issue is not the absence of support. HEIs often already have resources they can mobilise: international offices, student services, counselling teams, career services, language centres, academic advisors, and student associations. The issue is often that these resources are not sufficiently connected, visible, or adapted to the realities of exiled students. Supporting these students does not always mean creating something new. It often means using what already exists within institutions more effectively.

For example, a welcome desk does not have to be a completely new service. It can build on the existing student support office, once it is better equipped to answer questions about residence status, missing documents, housing, healthcare, or local services.

From improvisation to clear pathways

EXIL’s report on Best Practices in Supporting Exiled Students shows that during the initial phase of the crisis, HEIs demonstrated remarkable agility and flexibility. Emergency scholarships, temporary admissions, housing solutions, and ad hoc support mechanisms were implemented quickly and often effectively. These responses proved that institutions can act fast and creatively when needed.

While flexibility is vital, the EXIL project found that it can lead to fragmentation when not carefully managed. Without clear standards, flexibility often means students getting different answers to the same question. An exiled student who asks about credit recognition and gets three different answers from three different offices does not experience flexibility — they experience confusion.

Students need to know where to go, what options are available, and what steps to follow. Staff also need clarity on who is responsible for what, where to direct students, and how to ensure that support is followed up within the institution.

HEIs need clear procedures that staff can apply consistently, and students can understand.

Inclusion goes beyond access

Providing access to higher education—through flexible admissions or recognition procedures—is essential, but it is only the starting point.

Inclusion must be understood across the entire student journey: from arrival and orientation to academic progression, social integration, and transition into employment. Financial support, academic mentoring, legal guidance, and opportunities for social integration can make the difference between simply entering higher education and being able to participate, progress, and feel part of the academic community.

To help HEIs move in this direction, EXIL has developed practical recommendation guides focusing on both support services and pedagogical adaptation, offering tools for HEIs seeking to strengthen the inclusion of exiled students.

Making it last

Tools and recommendation guides only matter if institutions are ready to use them — and to keep using them after a crisis. The question, then, is not only what to do, but how to make it last.

Students’ displacement is not a temporary phenomenon, and HEIs will continue to face this reality. EXIL has shown that HEIs can respond to forced displacement. Many already did, often with creativity, commitment, and limited time.

The risk, once the urgency passes, is that what was built under pressure quietly disappears — absorbed back into “business as usual”, or lost when the people who were in charge no longer work on it.

What was created under pressure should not remain an exception or depend only on individual commitment. It should become part of the institutions’ capabilities. This is why institutionalisation matters. When procedures are documented, responsibilities are shared, and services are connected, inclusion no longer depends on exceptional circumstances, but on institutional design.

EXIL showed that European HEIs have the capacity to respond to a crisis and know how to mobilise existing resources, staff expertise, and partnerships. The gap between a good emergency response and lasting inclusive support is often smaller than it looks. Closing this gap depends less on finding new funding and more on the institutional will to coordinate these efforts permanently. It requires a commitment to treating inclusion not as a temporary crisis response, but as a defining feature of a Higher Education Institution.

The European Union funded the EXIL project through the Erasmus+ programme, and it ran from April 2024 to March 2026. All the reports, guides, and podcasts produced by the project are freely available on the project website.

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