International students feeling more unwelcome in Netherlands, worried about future

International students mostly love studying in the Netherlands. Still, they notice an increasingly negative sentiment towards them and worry about their future here, the Volkskrant reports after surveying 358 international students. “We are wrongly blamed for all kinds of problems, but we are only scapegoats,” one told the newspaper.

The growing number of international students in Dutch higher education is increasingly a subject of discussion. For years, politicians, education institutions, and businesses have actively recruited students from other countries to further expand the Netherlands' leading position as a knowledge and innovation country. But now that lecture halls are overcrowded and everyone notices the housing shortage, the sentiment has shifted to discouraging students from abroad.

The government developed a package of measures to give higher education institutions more control over the influx of new international students. For example, certain English-taught courses will, from now on, only be taught in Dutch, and every popular English-taught course will also have a Dutch option. The universities also announced that they would not introduce any new English-taught courses. Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf is also working on a law allowing universities to refuse students from outside Europe for certain courses.

All that is already having an effect. The number of international students decreased slightly this academic year for the first time in years.

The surveyed international students have noticed that the wind has changed. Less than half still feel welcome here, and they worry about the way they are talked about in politics and viewed by the rest of society. Some have already experienced negative reactions from Dutch students.

“As an international student, I do not feel welcomed by the Dutch, who try to pass on the problems surrounding housing and social security to us,” a Polish student at the University of Amsterdam told the newspaper. She fears that they will be “treated like shit” if the proposed right-wing government comes to power in the Netherlands. Many surveyed students mentioned being concerned about the PVV’s election win.

But despite the housing shortage, homesickness, the “lack of mountains,” the increasing difficulty of making friends with “the xenophobic Dutch,” and the problems blamed on them, most international students are happy with their decision to study in the Netherlands, they told the newspaper. Half of the students the Volkskrant spoke to plan to stay in the Netherlands after their studies and build a life here.