The numbers are in: 1937 members applied for one of the 1619 Summer University places in 2018. It’s the first time in decades that the number of applicants stayed below the 2000 threshold. Five years ago, in 2013 altogether 4066 members applied. That’s more than twice as many as this year.

Already in the past years the numbers both of organised Summer Universities as well as applicants had been falling. This trend continued this year with a record number of only 57 SUs being organised – the lowest number in 25 years. It’s not clear what caused this decline. The late arrival of PR materials this year can only be one reason. The Summer University Coordination Team tried to revert the negative trend by creating a new type of event, the Summer Break, with five pilots taking part this year. Their numbers are not included in the statistics, because they are not official Summer Universities.

 


This year, not a single one of the Summer Universities received 100 applications. The most popular one was the Summer University of the antenna of AEGEE-Europe’s next President Spyros Papadatos: AEGEE-Ioannina’s trademark SU “BLUEStories III: Follow the Sun” got 98 applications. By the way, AEGEE-Ioannina’s SU was also on top last year – that time with 124 applications! They managed to build on a success formula.

Transsiberian Dream TSU promotion at Agora Kraków

On the first six places this year are exclusively SUs in Southern Europe. The first non-southern SU was AEGEE-Moskva’s legendary “Transsiberian DREAM vol.10: Back on Track” with 76 applications – despite the highest fee that any SU ever had with 605 Euros. Well, the particpants will get value for money – the participants will travel all the way to Vladivostok.

As always, Spanish members are most keen to visit an SU: altogether 489 applied! However, that’s 90 Spanish members less than last year. Also the number of the second biggest group of applicants declined: last year 320 Italians applied for an SU, this year only 271. On the other hand, the third biggest group, the Dutch applicants, grew from 209 to 216. In the nationality statistics the same countries are on top as last year: Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Russia and Turkey.

Hungary and Germany switched places on rank 6 and 7. And that’s because of AEGEE-Budapest. For many years around 300 AEGEE-Budapest members applied for an SU. Some years ago the number started falling. Last year 101 members from the Hungarian capital wanted to go on an SU – this year only 70. This has also consequences for the sustainability of the antenna. 59 members from AEGEE-Bilbao applied, which made them the second biggest group – last year they were seventh with 56 applicants.

While in 2017 members of 146 locals wanted to go on a Summer adeventure, this year the number decreased to 139. Only 97 locals had five or more members applying. This number remained fairly constant: last year it was 96. And finally: 56% of all applicants are female – which is about the general average of AEGEE members.

Check the full statistics here: www.projects.aegee.org/suct/su2018/statistics.php.