Mapping Mobility 2011: international mobility in Dutch higher education
This month, Nuffic published its annual publication on international mobility in higher education: Mapping Mobility 2011. The document gives information about the number of international students, their countries of origin, the most popular Dutch institutions and many, many other facts on international students in the Netherlands.
Of course, there is also a lot of information on Dutch students in other countries. Even though collecting reliable and comparable data remains somewhat of a problem, in general Mapping Mobility 2011 gives an adequate overview of the trends and developments in student mobility.
Download Mapping Mobility 2011(2.0 MB) (2 MB)
Student mobility to and from the Netherlands
The first striking observation is the difference between inbound and outbound mobility. The total number of international students in the Netherlands is 81,700. There are 42,500 Dutch students abroad.
Although the percentage of Dutch students registered at a foreign institution slightly increased, the share of Dutch students abroad stays rather low, under 3% of the total Dutch student population. Main destination countries are the surrounding countries (the United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany) and the United States.
The top three countries of origin of international students in the Netherlands are:
- Germany (by far the main supplier of international students in Holland);
- China;
- Belgium.
Mobility between neighbouring countries
A thematic session of the publication focuses on the mobility of students between neighbouring countries. We see that several European countries are facing some problems with the number of students coming from one or two neighbouring countries.
The French-speaking part of Belgium tried to limit the number of French students at their medical studies, Austria wanted to introduce additional criteria for German students and Denmark tried to reduce the influx of Swedish students.
In the Netherlands there is some concern about the large number of German students in Dutch higher education, although no concrete measures have so far been taken to limit this number.
Other observations
For some years in a row, we see an increase of the number of students from Bulgaria, currently the 8th biggest supplier of foreign students to the Netherlands, just behind the United States, but ahead of countries like Poland, the UK and Indonesia.
Other countries with increasing student numbers in the Netherlands are Turkey, Greece and students from relatively new EU member states.