IMHO I don’t think removing the incentives on the side of the university would be enough to decrease the number of international students in the short term. Even without advertising by the universities, the Netherlands is a popular choice precisely because you can do almost every degree in English without having to learn another language. Combine this with fairly high-ranking universities, high quality quality of life, almost everyone outside of uni speaking English and I don’t think removing incentives would have much of an effect.
I think this is probably the best solution in the short term, especially for Dutch students.
Even without advertising by the universities, the Netherlands is a popular choice
The missing piece of the puzzle here is that I am not really in favour of unrestricted admissions, which is the norm in many western European countries, including NL.
My reform would be to 1. set up a minimum standard of education that I want to offer to the students 2. take stock of my institutional resources and see how many students I can offer quality education to, 3. work with my local community to see how many out-of-city students we can house in humane conditions, 4. bring tuition down to non-profit rates (third-country nationals will pay at-cost prices but they won’t subsidise others with inflated fees), 5. only admit as many students as I can reasonably educate in high quality conditions based on the outcomes of the previous four points.
In other words, I believe that Numerus clausus should be the norm, not the exception. The universities may remain attractive, but they can simply not admit not admit more students than they can support.
Whether it makes sense to offer degrees in English after my reforms remains to be seen. Maybe it still does, maybe it doesn’t - but my priority is that students get quality education no matter what. What language it is in is more of a practicality in my eyes.
I pretty much agree with you on that. I would only add that some priority aught to be given to local students (as in both in-city and regional out-of-city students). Otherwise you could end up with the situation where, if there are still a lot more applications from international students compared to local students, they could force out local students who cannot afford to go study somewhere else.
One issue with changing the current system is that unrestricted admissions of out-of-city students isn’t just a norm in western European countries. I’m pretty sure there is an EU law that you are not allowed to discriminate between domestic and international students and changing that would undoubtedly cause political issues. I hope they do change that it in the future, but that is more of a medium term solution.
Therefore, I still think this is probably the best short term solution.
Otherwise you could end up with the situation where, if there are still a lot more applications from international students compared to local students, they could force out local students who cannot afford to go study somewhere else.
In Step 4 of my sketch of a reform proposal, I have removed the main incentive for that tendency by making an international student bring as much income to the university as a local or Union student would. E.g. if a Dutch student costs to the Dutch/Union state 10k EUR/y (even if the Dutch/Union student only pays a fraction of that amount out of pocket), then an international student should also pay 10k EUR/y (whether fully out of pocket or with some Dutch state subsidy is not relevant, because to the university it’s exactly the same income).
If international students are not more profitable to the university than local/Union students, then I expect that we will have gone a long way towards fixing the issue. If there are some remaining distortions we can address them at a second time, but I think that once the profit motive is out of the way, the rates will not be at alarming levels.
I’m pretty sure there is an EU law that you are not allowed to discriminate between domestic and international students and changing that would undoubtedly cause political issues.
Unrestricted admission is not legally required in the EU. Counter-examples include Greece and Cyprus where restricted, competitive admission, is the norm. Within a rounding error, 100% of all programmes have restricted admission and a fixed number of students they can enrol each year.
Equal treatment is only legally necessary for EU citizens. Third-country nationals can be admitted to additional restrictions or requirements (and it is the case already, that’s why they often pay double or triple the amount of tuition). Legally, it would be possible to have unrestricted admission for Dutch/Union students and restricted admission of third-country nationals. (But that wouldn’t solve the resources problem - EU students also had to live in tents in Groningen)
Out-of-city domestic differences in tuition where also legally possible. When the UK was still in the EU, Scotland imposed higher tuition fees on English students compared to Scottish and EU students. They could price-discriminate within their country, but not across the Union. (That’s also a weird option to me, I’m not sure what problem it solves)
Finally, countries like Cyprus, can carve out available places so that Cypriot/EU students compete for a certain allotment (say 70% of the available intake positions) and third-country nationals can only compete for the remaining positions, separately. This could make sense for NL too.
Therefore, I still think this is probably the best short term solution.
I mean, yeah, I agree it will probably work to a great extend, but it’s not a clean solution in my eyes. It’s not going after the root cause itself, but after a co-morbidity.
Theoretically, it’s possible that even under my reform idea, which would also limit the number of third-country national students to a great extend, it would still make sense to offer many degrees in English for the benefit of mostly Dutch students (i.e. the talking points about international competitiveness etc may have actual merit). With this solution, that possibility is ruled out.
A highly theoretical discussion perhaps, but I think the NL example is a very clear cut one and it lends itself to being used to discuss this topic.
IMHO I don’t think removing the incentives on the side of the university would be enough to decrease the number of international students in the short term. Even without advertising by the universities, the Netherlands is a popular choice precisely because you can do almost every degree in English without having to learn another language. Combine this with fairly high-ranking universities, high quality quality of life, almost everyone outside of uni speaking English and I don’t think removing incentives would have much of an effect.
I think this is probably the best solution in the short term, especially for Dutch students.
The missing piece of the puzzle here is that I am not really in favour of unrestricted admissions, which is the norm in many western European countries, including NL.
My reform would be to 1. set up a minimum standard of education that I want to offer to the students 2. take stock of my institutional resources and see how many students I can offer quality education to, 3. work with my local community to see how many out-of-city students we can house in humane conditions, 4. bring tuition down to non-profit rates (third-country nationals will pay at-cost prices but they won’t subsidise others with inflated fees), 5. only admit as many students as I can reasonably educate in high quality conditions based on the outcomes of the previous four points.
In other words, I believe that Numerus clausus should be the norm, not the exception. The universities may remain attractive, but they can simply not admit not admit more students than they can support.
Whether it makes sense to offer degrees in English after my reforms remains to be seen. Maybe it still does, maybe it doesn’t - but my priority is that students get quality education no matter what. What language it is in is more of a practicality in my eyes.
I pretty much agree with you on that. I would only add that some priority aught to be given to local students (as in both in-city and regional out-of-city students). Otherwise you could end up with the situation where, if there are still a lot more applications from international students compared to local students, they could force out local students who cannot afford to go study somewhere else.
One issue with changing the current system is that unrestricted admissions of out-of-city students isn’t just a norm in western European countries. I’m pretty sure there is an EU law that you are not allowed to discriminate between domestic and international students and changing that would undoubtedly cause political issues. I hope they do change that it in the future, but that is more of a medium term solution.
Therefore, I still think this is probably the best short term solution.
In Step 4 of my sketch of a reform proposal, I have removed the main incentive for that tendency by making an international student bring as much income to the university as a local or Union student would. E.g. if a Dutch student costs to the Dutch/Union state 10k EUR/y (even if the Dutch/Union student only pays a fraction of that amount out of pocket), then an international student should also pay 10k EUR/y (whether fully out of pocket or with some Dutch state subsidy is not relevant, because to the university it’s exactly the same income).
If international students are not more profitable to the university than local/Union students, then I expect that we will have gone a long way towards fixing the issue. If there are some remaining distortions we can address them at a second time, but I think that once the profit motive is out of the way, the rates will not be at alarming levels.
Unrestricted admission is not legally required in the EU. Counter-examples include Greece and Cyprus where restricted, competitive admission, is the norm. Within a rounding error, 100% of all programmes have restricted admission and a fixed number of students they can enrol each year.
Equal treatment is only legally necessary for EU citizens. Third-country nationals can be admitted to additional restrictions or requirements (and it is the case already, that’s why they often pay double or triple the amount of tuition). Legally, it would be possible to have unrestricted admission for Dutch/Union students and restricted admission of third-country nationals. (But that wouldn’t solve the resources problem - EU students also had to live in tents in Groningen)
Out-of-city domestic differences in tuition where also legally possible. When the UK was still in the EU, Scotland imposed higher tuition fees on English students compared to Scottish and EU students. They could price-discriminate within their country, but not across the Union. (That’s also a weird option to me, I’m not sure what problem it solves)
Finally, countries like Cyprus, can carve out available places so that Cypriot/EU students compete for a certain allotment (say 70% of the available intake positions) and third-country nationals can only compete for the remaining positions, separately. This could make sense for NL too.
I mean, yeah, I agree it will probably work to a great extend, but it’s not a clean solution in my eyes. It’s not going after the root cause itself, but after a co-morbidity.
Theoretically, it’s possible that even under my reform idea, which would also limit the number of third-country national students to a great extend, it would still make sense to offer many degrees in English for the benefit of mostly Dutch students (i.e. the talking points about international competitiveness etc may have actual merit). With this solution, that possibility is ruled out.
A highly theoretical discussion perhaps, but I think the NL example is a very clear cut one and it lends itself to being used to discuss this topic.