The 'IdP of Last Resort' for Student Mobility is a solution designed and operated by GÉANT to support online enrolment of students in the Erasmus+ mobility programme. The European commission is carrying out a massive digitalization of the Erasmus+ programme under the European Student Card Initiative. One of the goals the digitalization process is to enable a fully digital student application process for Erasmus+ leveraging on the national eIDs through eIDAS and the student IDs through the Academic Identity Federations and eduGAIN.
However, not all of the institutions that are eligible for Erasmus+ participation can run the necessary IT infrastructure to connect to their national federation, or they may be in countries where the federation is not yet connected to eduGAIN. GÉANT and University of Jaume I, partners in EDSSI Project, led the analysis of the higher education institution ecosystem with regards to their identity provider (IdP) solutions. Based on that analysis, GÉANT was able to leverage the MyAcademicID platform to implement the 'IdP of last resort' solution for the above cases. The ‘IdP of last resort’ makes it possible for these institutions to manage the affiliation and European Student Identifiers for their Erasmus+ mobility students in a simple and practical way.
The ‘IdP of last resort’ was launched in August 2021 and is already helping more than 400 institutions that participate in Erasmus+, but are unable technically to support their students’ online participation. The work has been supported by the European Digital Student Service Infrastructure project, EDSSI, which is working towards seamless student mobility with connected student e-services.