The number of new international students starting a university bachelor’s degree in the Netherlands fell by 5.2% this academic year, according to figures from international education body Nuffic. The number of foreign students enrolling in a degree course at an hbo college fell even further, by 6.7%, the Nuffic figures show.
The right-wing Dutch government wants to reduce the number of foreign students coming to the Netherlands and is planning several steps to achieve this, including cutting the number of English-language courses.
“We are now seeing a clear drop,” said Nuffic researcher Jonatan Weenink. “This trend is important because it will work its way through the entire student body.”
By contrast, the number of international students signing up for a master’s degree rose by almost 10%, to nearly 20,000. However, 43% of these students were already in the Netherlands for a bachelor’s degree, Weenink said. Ten years ago, just 23% of foreign master’s students had taken their first degree in the Netherlands.
Some 16.6% of the Dutch student population is now “international”, compared with 15.9% a year ago. Most – 92,372 – are studying at a university, while 38,632 are taking a college degree.
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The biggest rise in international student numbers is at Eindhoven and Delft universities of technology, where enrollments rose by 24.4% and 21% respectively.
Almost three-quarters of international students come from the EU or EER, down by around one percentage point on a year ago. Most come from Germany – although their number was the lowest in 10 years – followed by Italy, Romania and Spain.
China leads the group of non-EER students, followed by India and Turkey. Just over 1,000 students from Britain are studying in the Netherlands, and their number has been falling since Brexit, Nuffic said.
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