Abstract

The present article is part of a research project whose objective is to know and analyze the entrepreneurial psychosocial competences generated in the field of higher education. Thus, based on the dimension of internationalization in higher education institutions (HEIs), this study presents results on the challenges that undergraduate students declare to transit in their experience of international mobility and the consequent development of the mentioned competences. Through qualitative methodology, with a phenomenological design and ethnomethodological approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with an intentional sample of 36 undergraduate students of the National University of Mar del Plata, Argentina, who carried out an international mobility in the years 2016, 2017 or 2018. The interviews dealt mainly with the characterization of pre-mobility, mobility and post-mobility moments. The results show that, due to this experience, students overcome cultural, linguistic, bureaucratic, economic and academic challenges, from which they acquire a greater mental openness to new experiences, self-knowledge, autonomy, resolutive capacity and a critical and integral look. It is concluded that not only this experience has a positive effect at an individual, academic and professional level in the group of students that carries it out, but it is also an important institutional strategy to reinforce the university social responsibility, in order to give answers to the new social troubles.

Keywords: internationalization; higher education; student’s mobility; skills