Over 60,000 Students Have Commenced Bachelor Studies in the Netherlands in 2022/23

Dutch universities have welcomed 60,049 new bachelor degree students in 2022/23 academic year who have not pursued bachelor programs in the country earlier, Universities of The Netherlands (UNL), an organization that represents 14 Dutch universities, has announced.

That was a decrease of 4.6 percent or nearly 2,900 students less than in the 2021/22 academic year, when universities recorded a higher-than-expected intake of bachelor students, mainly in the pre-university pupil intake, Erudera.com reports.

“The increase in pre-university education intake was caused by the larger number of scholars who had taken their final exams in the 2019/20 academic year and had passed there. In addition, due to the COVID situation, fewer graduates took a gap year, but more students started directly in higher education. This was also the case in the academic year 2020/’21,” UNL said in a statement.

That sudden increase in the 2021/22 academic year, according to UNL, was the main cause of the lower bachelor intake in 2022/23.

Data show that there were fewer students who enrolled at a university of applied science to pursue their bachelor’s degrees compared to the number in the previous year. The number of first-year students starting bachelor programs on October 1, 2022, is as follows:

• 12,693 freshmen within the sector of behavioral and social sciences
• 11,259 freshmen in economics
• 7,245 freshmen in engineering
• 6,523 freshmen in natural sciences
• 6,118 freshmen in law
• 5,939 freshmen in humanities and linguistics
• 5,120 freshmen in medical sciences
• 3,876 freshmen in interdisciplinary
• 1,276 freshmen in agricultural sciences

Meanwhile, the number of international students in the Netherlands has increased slightly in 2022/23 by 7 percent. It was a gradual increase compared to the previous year when universities in the country recorded a 12 or 15 percent increase in international students annually.

Last year, 18,902 international students began pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Dutch universities, the majority (76 percent) from the European Economic Area (EEA), and most of the students within this group were from Germany. About 7 percent of the bachelor’s intake in 2022 came from Europe.

“The range of English-taught Bachelor’s degree programmes and the fact that Dutch universities are highly visible in international rankings contribute to the reputation of the Netherlands as a country with excellent higher education institutions,” UNL notes.

The number of students enrolled in a master’s program in 2022/23 has also decreased compared to a year earlier. A total of 50,312 started their master’s degrees in the corresponding academic year, which is an 11 percent drop or 6,400 students less than the prior year.

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