Universities attract fewer bachelor’s students from home and abroad

For three years in a row, fewer international bachelor’s students have been enrolling at Dutch universities. Students from Europe in particular are staying away. Last year, there were nine percent fewer, and this year almost five percent fewer. But the number of Dutch students has also declined this year: enrolment fell by approximately 3.5 percent.

A total of 332,000 students (first-year and older) are now enrolled at Dutch universities – more than 6,000 fewer than last year. According to forecasts by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, this number will only continue to decline in the coming years.

This emerges from provisional figures published by UNL, the umbrella organisation for Dutch universities. Enrolment figures will only be finalised in the spring. TU Delft uses December as its reference date for this.

Stable funding

The fact that UNL is now publishing the provisional figures cannot be viewed in isolation from the formation of a new government. It is not without reason that President Caspar van den Berg states in the press release that it is urgent “for a new cabinet to develop a clear strategy on how we can continue to attract, train and retain talent”. That talent cannot come from the Netherlands alone, he says: ‘We simply do not have enough young people for that.’

‘We simply do not have enough young people for that’

The declining number of students, combined with the outgoing cabinet’s budget cuts, is putting universities under further pressure. UNL expects this to result in more programmes being discontinued and research being halted. According to Van den Berg, “more stable funding for universities” is therefore necessary, so that institutions become less dependent on the number of students they manage to attract.

TU Delft

Preliminary figures from TU Delft do not seem to indicate a decline. The annual October measurement of new bachelor’s students does not show a clear trend. This year, there were 3,728 first-year students at that time. In October 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021, there were 3,617, 3,575, 3,613 and 3,762 respectively.

The number of international first-year bachelor’s students also fluctuates, although these figures are less comparable. In October 2025, the figure was 24 per cent. For previous years, only figures from the final December measurement are available. In December 2024, the figure was 23 per cent and a year earlier it was 20 per cent. Incidentally, TU Delft has relatively few fully English-language bachelor’s programmes. There are only four.

The programme that stands out in the provisional October figures for 2025 is mechanical engineering. At that time, no fewer than 919 first-year students were enrolled in this always very popular programme, almost a quarter of the total number of first-year students.

HOP, Naomi Bergshoeff/Delta, Saskia Bonger