Student mobility to the Netherlands, compared with other EU countries
In an earlier blog I referred to Dutch students studying abroad. The same OECD data also allow for comparison between countries regarding student inflows, or better, regarding foreign students registering in the country.
Jumping into the experience
The data actually also refer to students with prior education or residence in another country, but, as I argued in my previous blog, the more consistent quality of the nationality data makes us prefer the use of these data in the present analysis.
As can be seen in Graphs 1 and 2, on the whole the number of foreign students has increased between 2007-08 and 2008-09. The increase was largest in the UK, Spain and Germany, with respectively 36,000, 20,000 and 11,000 new registrations.
In the Netherlands, just over 3,500 new foreign students registered in the same period. The only exception to this increase occurred in Portugal, where the number of foreign students declined by almost 700 between 2007-08 and 2008-09.
In the five-year period between 2004-05 and 2008-09 the increase was also largest in the UK and Spain, this time followed by Austria, Italy and, at a distance, the Netherlands, with increases of respectively 104,000, 39,000, 25,000, 21,000 and 13,000 foreign students. Since 2004-05 the number of foreign students declined only in Germany, by 3,000 students.
In Graph 3 the numbers of foreign students are expressed as percentages of the whole higher education student population. These percentages are an indication of the importance of the foreign student population and, as such, are a measure of internationalisation of higher education in the country concerned.
As could be expected from the above, there was an overall increase in the percentage of foreign students. The declining percentages in the case of Germany, Greece and Ireland are due to the larger increase of the whole student population between 2007-08 and 2008-09, as compared to the increase of the number of foreign students involved.
In the case of Portugal the reverse is true and, while there is still a small negative percentage change between 2007-08 and 2008-09, the effect of the declining number of foreign students was largely mitigated by the decline in total student population.
The percentage of foreign students in the Netherlands lies below the EU average. As both percentages show a similar development over the years, it seems that, without additional Dutch effort, this relative position below the average will not change in the near future.