Foreign students to attend event in The Hague
30 Oct 2009
At the invitation of Nuffic thousands of foreign students currently studying in the Netherlands will be going to The Hague to attend the Day of the International Student on Saturday 7 November. Prior to this event, a two-day working conference will also be held for alumni of Dutch higher education institutions who are now spread out across the globe.
Holland Alumni conference
The Holland Alumni conference organized by Nuffic on 5 and 6 November will bring together 120 alumni from across the globe. They will be visiting workshops oriented towards their professions where discussions will also be held on how to strengthen their mutual ties to the Netherlands, for example by establishing alumni associations. Currently, the Netherlands offers support for the establishment of such associations. Alumni are important informal ambassadors for the Netherlands and its business community, as they are fully acquainted with Dutch products and services through their own experiences. Meetings like these often have people eager to attend more.
Day of the International Student
The entire World Forum in The Hague has been hired for the Day of the International Student (DIS) on Saturday 7 November. State Secretary Nebahat Albayrak of the Ministry of Justice and Jozias van Aartsen, Mayor of The Hague, will be speaking. General Director of Nuffic Sander van den Eijnden will open the conference.
The DIS is organized on an annual basis by Nuffic to show its appreciation of the fact that these foreign students have chosen to study in the Netherlands rather than another country. The day, during which visitors will be introduced to Dutch culture in a light-hearted manner, will have a festive character but will also include more serious elements.
The Netherlands ranks among the top ten
Where the quality of education, research and the living environment are concerned, foreign students who are acquainted with Dutch higher education – through the Internet, for example – consistently rank the Netherlands among the top ten. Sixty per cent of these students intend to recommend Dutch higher education institutions to their friends and colleagues. However, they do think that there should be more publicity. Dutch research universities and universities of applied science currently offer more than 1450 courses taught in English that are geared towards an international student body. In the previous academic year, more than 78,000 of the well over half a million students enrolled in universities in the Netherlands were foreign students.