Nowadays, the program involves around 31 European countries and in the Czech Republic, it was launched in 1997.
CEEPUS, which stands for Central European Exchange Program for University Studies, is program contributing to the development of higher education in Europe since 1995. The program is aimed mainly to student and teacher mobility. It opened the multidisciplinary project specialized in helping South East European countries such as Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Like the Erasmus Program, it supports the ECTS system. And the most important thing, it works equally with both member states and some non-member states of the European Union. Because of its success, more and more countries keep joining it. At this time, there are 15 member states in the program and the Czech Republic acceded to this program in 1996.
Both the Erasmus Program and CEEPUS are for university students and teachers from Europe. To participate in these programs students must be studying bachelor's degree, master's degree or doctor's degree and must have completed their second semester, which means that students in their first year of a bachelor's degree study program could not be enrolled. CEEPUS allows students to study and stay in the countries in which they could not study under the Erasmus Program, such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova and Serbia. Students interested in participation in this program must have citizenship of the programs member state. Moreover, they must study full-time form of study at public university. .
As for the Erasmus Program, it offers students to study not only in 27 member states of the European Union, but also in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Turkey. Students who want to study under the Erasmus Program, unlike CEEPUS, could be from public universities as well as from private universities. They also need not have a citizenship of member state, but they should have at least a permanent residence.
