Record number of university students
There are 328 thousand students enrolled at Dutch universities, provisional counts show. That is 8 percent more than last year and twice as many as twenty years ago.
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Universities association VSNU cites a number of causes for the strong growth. Due to the corona measures in secondary education, considerably more students passed the VWO exam this year. Moreover, they seem to have chosen a gap year less often. All in all, the vwo intake will grow by 15 percent.
There are also 10 percent more HBO students, most of them in a transition program to a master's degree. The intake for master's programs themselves seems to have increased very slightly.
International students
Despite the travel restrictions, the influx of international students also grew slightly. 10 to 12 percent more students from the European Economic Area have registered (the countries of the EU plus Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland), but the number of non-EEA students decreased. It is not yet clear by what percentage, but the decrease will not be slight.
This strengthens our plea for structural investments in academic education
Another factor is that normally 7 percent of students drop out in the first year, compared to only 5,4 percent now. Due to the corona crisis, first-year students who had actually not obtained enough credits were allowed to progress to the second year conditionally. At the same time, fewer students graduated than expected due to the corona delay.
High pressure
“The coming year should show what the consequences are of postponing it binding study advice”, Says VSNU chairman Pieter Duisenberg. He thinks it is quite possible that the dropout rate will increase next year because some of the students still get stuck. All in all, the growth spurt will increase the pressure on universities and their employees, he expects. "This strengthens our plea for structural investments in scientific education."
The final enrollment figures will be announced early next year and broken down by university. HBO also expects more registrations. At the beginning of October, 9,5 percent more first-years had registered there.
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