In 2020, there were almost 25,000 German students in the Netherlands. According to Statistics Netherlands, this number has since fallen to 20,000, despite an overall increase in the number of international students.
In 2011, Germans made up almost half (46 percent) of all foreign students at Dutch higher education institutions, compared to 15 percent today. Conversely, the number of students from Italy, Romania and Spain is currently eight to nine times higher than in 2011, and China now ranks fifth.
Fast risers
Fast risers include Hungary and Portugal. In 2011, there were only a few hundred students from these countries at Dutch institutions, but their numbers have grown exponentially: today, there are 2,900 students from Portugal and 3,340 from Hungary. Over the same period, the number of Irish students rose 11-fold, from 180 to 2,040.
The number of students from other countries (29,300 in total, almost 20,000 more than in 2011) is also increasing, although the number of enrolments per nationality is still small: for example, there are nearly 1,500 students from Vietnam, 1,200 from Iran and 1,100 from the UK.
Of the 131.000 international students, 92,610 are enrolled at research universities (27 percent of all students) and 38,560 at universities of applied sciences (8.6 percent).
