Universities have always been laboratories where people from very different cultural backgrounds meet and work together. At the nearly 400 year-old University of Groningen in the Netherlands, shortly after its foundation, 18 native and 34 foreign professors were teaching there. The proportion of students from outside countries is also said to have been high. Mobility has always been a prominent feature in the lives of those who taught and studied at European universities.

The mobility of students and scientists is actively promoted in Europe nowadays by the Erasmus project, whose name calls to mind the proud tradition of mobility in Europe. As delegate of the Erasmus Programme for the Department of Earth Sciences I have experienced how, over the past years, numerous students were able to enrich their studies by studying abroad for a year. Many of them chose their third year for the exchange and most of them would agree that a short sojourn in another country for a single semester would hardly have sufficed to get to know the guest university and ordinary, everyday life.

We know that the introduction of courses leading to Bachelor and Master degrees should promote mobility. With the Bachelors, however, we also know that the mobility made possible with Erasmus is, unfortunately, made more difficult. Our students can no longer spend a whole year studying abroad. Some, at least, have decided to go for a short semester. The Master degree, on the other hand, opens up new exchange opportunities. We don't know yet whether many of our own students will renounce an ETH Masters and prefer to take it abroad. In the Earth Sciences department a Masters will normally take two years to complete. The long duration of the Masters programme now allows our students to make good use of Erasmus. For example, they can fit a study period abroad into their 2nd and 3rd semesters. At ETH the re-organisation of courses leads to a lengthening of the duration of study. We can only hope that this won't lead to a decline in mobility of our own students.

On the other hand, how attractive will ETH prove to be for foreign students? We ask ourselves, who is supposed to hear the call for mobility–and who isn't? We wonder what kind of entrance hurdles we should set up. How do we find bright and talented students? Is it the case that the best have already taken their Bachelors at the best universities? A few fortunate students from our partner universities in the IDEA League will have no trouble getting in. But does hidden talent exist at smaller universities that do not yet have a big marketing department? Should we also choose partner universities that don't figure under the top 50 on rankings lists?

Geology professor at ETH Zurich and ETH Life columnist: Helmut Weissert.

For various reasons, Abu Dhabi, like Shanghai, will become a profitable partner for ETH. A number of very promising contacts have also been established and strengthened in India. To intensify new connections, and in addition to the IDEA League, we could establish further networks; the HOPE Network ("Hyderabad-Ouagadougou-Pristina-ETH") could serve as a role model. In this way we could discover young talent while simultaneously contributing to knowledge transfer in situ, where it could nurture hope. And–who knows?–some of our own students and lecturers might take up the challenge of not only playing in the top league for a time, but of using their experience and knowledge to contribute to the construction of something new in these places. This would not only serve the mobility of the elite but also that of those who don't have either the social or economic background to play in the champion's league.