Minister wants action on stream of German students in Holland

Wednesday 28 December 2011

The cabinet wants Germany to contribute towards the cost of educating the increasing number of German students coming to the Netherlands, junior education minister Halbe Zijlstra says in a briefing to parliament.

Currently some 24,000 German students are attending Dutch universities and colleges, and the total is increasing by 14% a year, the minister said. In some border areas, it appears that colleges need German students to survive and in some cases lessons are only given in German, he said.

These colleges will have to restore the balance between Dutch and German students or face eventual closure, the minister said.

Marcel Wintels, chairman of the Fontys college in Venlo which offers 10 German language degrees, the institution will soon be switching to English. He says it is obvious that colleges close to the German border will attract large numbers of German students.

Costs

According to the briefing, which focuses on EU students who pay the same fees as Dutch students, there are advantages to having a mixture of nationalities at colleges and universities.

On average, foreign students score higher marks and complete their degrees more quickly than Dutch students. In addition, students who have studied abroad tend to move in 'international circles' and use their Dutch network once they work.

However, the Netherlands is €90m a year out of pocket because more EU students come to the Netherlands than Dutch students go abroad, the minister said.

Research

The minister has commissioned further research into the influx of foreign students, which will be completed in May 2012.

In the meantime, he plans to give universities more options to select which foreign students they take and to encourage them to do more to improve foreign students' affiliations with the Netherlands.

English and German should only be used in the context of the 'international classroom', not 'classrooms' in which Dutch students dominate, he said.

He also wants more to be done to encourage Dutch students to study abroad.

The 15-page briefing, in Dutch, can be downloaded here

© DutchNews.nl

Readers' comments

Comments have been closed for this article.