Fewer foreign students to the Netherlands through controversial transition year
Universities and colleges will recruit fewer students from outside Europe with a preparatory year. That should no longer be misused for 'hunting international students'.
Picture: Type tank
Dutch higher education offers preparatory programs for internationals who do not have the required school diploma, for example if they come from a country where the general level of secondary education is lower than here. They have to get rid of their knowledge gap within a year. In this way talented young people from these countries can still study here.
Improper use
But out articles in the Education magazine*View examples of previous awards here the article in the Education Magazine archive. it turned out two years ago that the transition year was used to recruit as many internationals as possible. This temptation is great, because students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) have to spend a lot of money for the preparatory year: between 12 thousand and 18 thousand euros. They then pay thousands of euros of institutional tuition each year for the program itself.
The National Higher Education Code of Conduct Committee drew up a research in. This confirmed that the preparatory year became 'a channel for recruiting additional international students who are not yet admissible'. Control at their level was inadequate. Five universities (Twente, Tilburg, Rotterdam, UvA and VU) and three universities of applied sciences (HvA, Hanze and The Hague) had outsourced this audit and the preparatory year to three private agencies.
Research showed that the transition year became a channel to recruit extra international students who are not yet admissible
Risk
Minister Van Engelshoven also had her Education Inspectorate research to do. It was limited to the universities, but in addition to the preparatory year, it also concerned the admission of non-EEA students to the bachelor's degree programmes.
Precise numbers are not known, but the Inspectorate reports that 4,6 percent (just under 2.500 students) of the total intake in 2020 came from countries without a school diploma at VWO level. Most of them come from China (20 percent), followed by Turkey (14 percent) and Russia (8 percent). Some have followed extra education or passed an admission test in their own country, others have to follow the preparatory year here first. The Education Inspectorate emphasizes that all this says nothing about the individual capacities of these students.
Havists disadvantaged?
The Inspectorate also warns that Dutch HAVO graduates may be disadvantaged because they do not have access to the preparatory year. But according to outgoing minister Van Engelshoven, that is not so bad. After all, there are alternatives for Dutch havists, she says; they can go to university by, for example, obtaining a pre-university diploma or after one year of study in higher professional education.
Last year, the National Code of Conduct for Higher Education did not advocate abolishing the preparatory year either, she writes: 'In a large number of countries, a five-year general education is the highest attainable level of secondary education, which is valued by Dutch standards. at havo level.' In this way, the best students from these countries still get the chance to study in the Netherlands.
According to Van Engelshoven, the universities have now stopped offering a preparatory year for numerus fixus programs (the minister was very critical about this) and are working with the universities of applied sciences on stricter selection criteria. If all goes well, the transition year will then only be accessible again to talented foreign students.
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