Just like any other academic degree in today's fierce competition for attention, funds and paying students in a highly materialistic and practical oriented culture, European Studies and its derivate fields must demonstrate their relevance to the graduates. By "relevance" I mean the capacity of a certain academic degree to be converted in a short time period in a respectable professional status and a decent pay job. For social studies and humanities in general this is not an easy task in

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... ar in Asian environments in which students are facing language barriers (involving access to materials written in various European languages) and are generally less tempted to approach academic subjects involving less practical and speculative thinking. According with my own personal experience some of the already mentioned "barriers" may be compensated by the perspective to travel in Europe through various schemes of academic exchanges, the perspective to obtain a remunerative job involving various kinds of international relations, diplomacy or international exchanges.