More and more foreign students are coming to Dutch universities. For popular studies – with an enrolment cap – the chances of Dutch students are being adversely affected. They are being ousted, UvA chair Geert ten Dam told NRC.

Stemming the influx

For years, the universities have wanted ‘instruments’ that would allow them to make a distinction between international and Dutch students and to manage the influx properly. This relates to major studies like psychology.

But the fall of the previous government meant that a bill for that purpose got stuck in the Senate. The idea was that higher education institutions would admit students to either a Dutch-language or an English-language track. The institutions could then set a maximum number of freshers for the English-language track. For the intake, you would not be able to discriminate in terms of nationality but you could still stem the influx of foreign students.

In the waste bin

Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf tossed the bill into the waste bin: he wants to think some more about it. The UvA wants to anticipate new legislation with an ‘experiment’. However, the minister first has to give his consent.

In an interview with HOP this summer Dijkgraaf said: “I can fill up the toolkit and then every farmer can patrol their own section of the dike, but that doesn’t mean that the dike will be well protected. We need to have a national strategy when it comes to internationalisation: what do we want to achieve together? Such a strategy is lacking right now.”

Most of the universities want to restrict the growth, but not all of them. For example Rianne Letschert, President of Maastricht University, tells NRC that the desire to restrict the number of foreign students leaves her with a “nasty taste in the mouth”.

Mechanical Engineering

This academic year, the student intake at TU/e in the bachelor’s programs consists of 40 percent international students. For the master’s programs, it is 43 percent. Similar concerns as those at the UvA were felt at TU/e’s Mechanical Engineering program, which was stretched to its limits two years ago. As an emergency measure, an extra admission requirement was added for the academic year 21/22: entrants were required to have a command of Dutch at the NT2 level, pending permission for the intake restriction (numerus fixus) that applies as of the current academic year. As a result, only six internationals started the bachelor Mechanical Engineering last year. This year, the number is expected to be 127, in addition to the 220 Dutch first-year students. This means that the intake of internationals is proportionally lower than average at TU/e.