Number of Europeans going to Dutch universities rises

Eastern Europeans going to Dutch universities on the increase

In general the number of Europeans going to Dutch universities has gone up, however this is especially true for Eastern Europeans, like Romanians, the Polish and Bulgarians, where the number sees a large increase. This is unusual as for a while, Eastern Europeans were not favouring Dutch universities and the numbers were low. So lets see what’s been going on with the figures.

As you can see there has been a large jump, for countries in Eastern Europe. For example in 2016-17, Poland had only 200 international students in the Netherlands this this year (2017-18) this has jumped to 1,352. For example Bulgaria had only 308 internationals, which has rose to 2,588 within the past year. This is a massive increase.

Source: Nuffic: incoming student mobility in dutch higher education 2017-2018

Why is this?

Well we can’t know for sure until we ask (so our Eastern European friends, why is this? Genuine question)? Well what we do know is that Dutch tuition is reasonably inexpensive in comparison to some other countries. To study in the Netherlands you are looking at a fee of around €2,000 per/year. In places such as the UK, this is just over £9,000 = almost €11,000 per/year. (Yes I know, it’s bloody crazy, I have debt up to my eyeballs right now – around €50,000 in debt eeek).

Why else would they be choosing the Netherlands over a place like the UK? Well, the language. As we bang on about often, the Netherlands has extremely good English – one of the best in fact. Not to mention that most courses are taught in English these days. It’s an absolute no brainer when it comes to finance and ease.

So friends, why do/have you studied in the Netherlands? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Also don’t forget to join our Facebook group for more discussions about Dutch stuffz. 

Emma Brown
Emma Brown
A familiar face at DutchRevew. Emma arrived in Holland in 2016 for a few weeks, fell in love with the place and never left. Here she rekindled her love of writing and travelling. Now you'll find her eating stroopwafels in the DutchReview office since 2017.

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