Slightly fewer international students attending universities
About one in three first-year students at Dutch universities comes from abroad, final counts show. This is just slightly fewer than before.
“It seems that discontinuing recruitment abroad and warning about limited student housing are paying off,” said Jouke de Vries, president of the universities association UNL.
Undergraduate programs kicked off with 220 fewer international students than last year, a total of 18,594, according to the latest tally. That is 31 percent of the total intake. Also at the UvA, a drop can be seen: 8,071 students started their bachelor's in 2022. In 2023, the number was 7,850.
For years, there has been unrest in the House of Representatives about the Englishification of higher education and the influx of foreign students. The minister is working on a bill on this topic and reached an agreement with universities that they should stop recruiting.
Masters
Master’s programs also saw a decline, but only among international students who came to the Netherlands specifically for a master’s degree. This time there were 1,700 fewer than last year.
But there are also other international students who got their bachelor’s degree here and then continue with a master’s. This group is also significant. All in all, this still added 550 international first-year master’s students.
By university
Nationwide, the bachelor’s programs attracted 800 fewer first-year students than last year. But it varies by university. Maastricht, for example, grew by 10 percent, while Tilburg shrank by eight percent.
All in all, enrollment in master’s programs grew by two percent to 52,500 thousand new students. Of them, 33 percent are international. 7,125 students started their masters at UvA in 2023, up from 6,905 in 2022.
Remarkably, Tilburg has the largest master’s student growth percentage of all universities: 12 percent. In contrast, the University of Groningen saw the number of first-years in master’s programs drop by seven percent.
