Preliminary enrollment figures at UNL show decline in international students

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is experiencing a sharp decline in the intake of international bachelor's students, down 23.5 percent from the September '23 intake. Last year there was also a decline nationwide. At VU last year, international intake at VU was already down -17 percent, then largely due to a numerus fixus at the Computer Science bachelor's program. Now the international intake is falling across the board.

In the past year, universities have taken measures to better control the intake of international students. For example, universities no longer recruit abroad except for shortage sectors, and warn new students from abroad not to come if they do not have housing. These measures have also been implemented at VU.

Concern over declining intake of international students
College President Margrethe Jonkman calls the decline a worrisome development now that the government has announced far-reaching budget cuts and measures against internationalization. "After two years of declining international intake, we are now in danger of falling below the minimum of 20 percent international students. This is a great loss for education and research where we are precisely committed to training people to become professionals with a broad outlook, suitable for the open and inclusive labor market in which they will find themselves." UNL president Caspar van den Berg also agrees: "This cabinet nevertheless wants to reduce the number of international students even further with harsh budget cuts and rigorous legislation. This threatens to become an unfocused clearcut that will endanger the survival of study programs, also for Dutch students."

Cabinet policyagainst international talent inhibits knowledge economy
Universities are therefore very concerned about the bill that will throw internationalization out of balance and about the cut of 293 million euros on top of that. That cut is equivalent to 34,000 fewer EEA undergraduate students. About 60 percent of EEA bachelor students in the Netherlands study at a university, the remaining 40 percent at a university of applied sciences. Van den Berg: "Universities also see that there are bottlenecks around internationalization, and want to address them. We have already made proposals for that as well. Everyone sees that we desperately need every bit of talent in the coming years, and the countries around us are therefore investing in more international talent and more room for research and innovation. The Dutch government is doing the opposite: it is slamming on the brakes and piling several large cutbacks on top of that."

Manifestation
On November 14, the higher education sector in Utrecht is organizing a manifestation for students and employees to speak out against the government's plans to cut education and science by one billion euros annually. The announced cuts, such as the long study fine and the scrapping of start-up and incentive grants, hit students and education and research at universities hard, in addition to the impact on internationalization.

Total enrollments
A total of 338,400 students are enrolled at universities this academic year. This is a slight decrease from the previous academic year when, over 340,000 students were enrolled. The bachelors show a small decrease, while the masters show a small increase. In the preliminary Oct. 1 census at VU, there are 31,351 "1st institution" enrollments, which is slightly lower than the final number last year (31,949).

The entire post on the preliminary enrollment figures can be read back at UNL.nl.