Ethnic minority students still trail native Dutch

Despite an increase in government funding, the gap in the performance between native Dutch and ethnic minority students has increased, the NRC said on Friday.

While the number of students from a minority background has doubled over the past 15 years, they are still less likely to complete their course than the native Dutch, research by the Diversiteit Echo centre and quoted by the paper shows.

In 2008, the education ministry put over €43m into initiatives to try to boost the performance of minority students. Of that, €40m went to hbo colleges, the rest to universities. The extra cash stopped in 2011.

But during that period, the number of ethnic minority students completing an hbo degree fell from 38% to 33%. The number of native Dutch students successfully finishing a degree also fell from 54% to 51%.

Ethnic minority students performed best at Utrecht University and worst at Amsterdam’s VU, the NRC said.

Thank you for donating to DutchNews.nl.

We could not provide the Dutch News service, and keep it free of charge, without the generous support of our readers. Your donations allow us to report on issues you tell us matter, and provide you with a summary of the most important Dutch news each day.

Make a donation