Number of German students in border regions plummets

The number of German students in the Netherlands is declining. In 2020-2021, there were nearly 25,000 German students in the Netherlands, but by 2024-2025, that number had fallen to just 20,000.

Many of them traditionally gravitate towards the border regions; in Limburg, one in six students is German. Maastricht is easily accessible to students from Aachen, as it is a short train ride away. Compared to other border areas, the decline in Limburg is probably not as severe. The number of German students there fell by about 7 per cent in three years, according to new figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS). In other border areas, the decline was more rapid.

The story is quite different in Groningen. In 2021-2022, almost 3,000 German students were enrolled. In 2023-2024, there were only 2,280, a decline of almost 22 per cent. In the border regions of Twente and Arnhem/Nijmegen, too, the number of German students has also dropped by over 20 percent.

University cities such as Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden and Delft also welcomed fewer German students in 2023-2024, but the decline is less pronounced than in border regions, between 2 and 10 per cent. Germans still remain the largest group of international students in the Netherlands, but the opposite does not happen as often: in 2021, fewer than 2,000 went to Germany to study. The Dutch are more likely to choose Belgium (a country with around 4,000 Dutch students) or the United Kingdom (around 3,600 students).

Graph showing the number of German students. Source: CBS. Image: HOP

There were 1,120 German students at UU in the 2021-2022 academic year. The number fell to 1,060 the following year and 1,000 last year.