The foreign student does come to the Netherlands spontaneously

Will the flow of international students at Dutch universities come to an end? Almost all universities have now stopped actively recruiting students abroad, a tour of showed this week The Financial Times at thirteen universities. From now on there will only be ‘information campaigns’ for foreigners who want to study at a Dutch university. A big difference with years ago, when universities were still on international fairs to entice students to come to the Netherlands.

1 Why is recruiting being discontinued?

Past campaigns have had an effect: international students easily find their way to the Netherlands, says a spokesperson for the Association of Dutch Universities (VSNU). “It is no longer necessary to set up a marketing campaign. The Netherlands is known as a top country in terms of universities and high-quality academic research. People come of themselves.”

Attracting more students is no longer a goal in itself. Universities have been overpopulated for some time now. The total number of students continues to grow and the workload for teachers is high. In the Netherlands, the number of foreign students has almost doubled in five years, according to figures from the VSNU. In 2015, there were still 36,124, in 2020 it was 70,248.

The result: high work pressure, full lecture halls and housing problems. In the meantime, there is too little money, says the VSNU spokesperson, which makes it impossible to employ enough people.

Since 2018, universities, together with universities of applied sciences, have been asking the government for instruments to control the influx of international students. For example, it has been asked to set a quota for the number of students from the European Economic Area (all EU countries plus Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland), where by far the most students come from. The institutions would also like to The number of fixed, see, a maximum number of spots, on English-taught studies that are popular with international students.

According to the inspection universities are doing too little against work pressure, among other things

2 Is it bad that the recruitment has stopped?

For international students: not directly. Those who want to study in the Netherlands can still find plenty of information; information remains, in the form of information on websites and in folders. At Utrecht University, the number of international applications is still increasing. The institution expects 2,000 new international students for 2021-2022, compared to 1,800 a year earlier. The number is not final yet, because students can still decide not to come.

It can improve the quality of education for Dutch students, says Maarten van Dorp, chairman of the Amsterdam student advocacy group ASVA. “The smaller the scale, the better the education.” Universities cannot exclude students, but to guarantee the quality of education it would be nice if there were fewer international students, thinks Van Dorp. “Not because we find them annoying, but because higher education is too massive. Once the quality is guaranteed, they are most welcome.”

The number of new students at universities will increase again next year

3 How important are international students?

Attracting more international students was an ambition of both universities and the government. It could result in a nice interaction between education and the business community: economic cooperation in the future would become easier, for example.

Contrary to what is sometimes thought, international students are not a revenue model, says the spokesperson for the VSNU. Yes, the students pay more tuition fees. But that is because a university does not receive a subsidy for them from the Dutch government. The higher amount should make up for that. If that is included, a university does not earn more from international students than from Dutch students, according to the spokesperson.

Furthermore, Utrecht University finds it important, for example, to have a good balance of students from different backgrounds. “We do this because we are training for a labor market that is becoming increasingly complex and increasingly international,” said a spokesperson.

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