More freshmen expected in higher education
If the omens aren't deceiving, colleges and universities may welcome many freshmen in September: more students have signed up than last year.
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De universities currently have about ten percent more registrations for their bachelor's programs than a year ago. At the colleges the counter is almost four percent in the plus.
But registrations are not the same as registrations. Students still have to pay tuition fees and complete their registration. Sometimes they don't show up at all. Roughly one in three still drops out.
Last year, of the 153 HBO registrations, 107 first-years remained who actually started the academic year. 53 thousand started at the universities, while there were 81 thousand registrations.
trend
Nevertheless, a trend can be distilled from the registration figures. For weeks now, HBO has had more than three percent more registrations compared to last year. It must be strange if the university of applied sciences does not want to grow anyway.
Initially, the increase seemed much greater in academic education: about 1 percent. By the deadline of May XNUMX, it was thirteen percent and now the universities are at about eleven percent. Whatever remains of it, substantial growth can be expected in any case.
This could be due to international students: the number of bachelor's students from outside the Netherlands has been increasing for some time now, from about five thousand first-years in 2011 to more than ten thousand in 2017. Things have been going fast, especially in the last three years. But information about the origin of the new freshmen will not become available until later.
Pressure
One of the studies getting busy is believed to be artificial intelligence, reported the NOS earlier. Two of the programs have already stopped students and the other programs are also considering restricting the intake for the 2019 / '20 academic year.
Make sure that international students do not crowd out Dutch students in study programs with a numerus fixus, warns the Interstadelijk Studenten Overleg (ISO) in a response. The ISO suggests that the study programs can offer an English and a Dutch track, “with selection on the English track”.
That is one of the ideas that universities and universities of applied sciences have themselves put forward in their internationalization agenda. Minister Van Engelshoven also sees something in this, wrote them last month.
