The number of non-western, non-native students in higher education has tripled in the last ten years. Last year, almost sixty thousand were enrolled in a university or school of professional education.
Statistics Netherlands has come out with these figures in the Jaarboek onderwijs in cijfers 2007 (Statistical Education Yearbook 2007). In higher professional education, the growth was the most dramatic, but in universities overall the number of non-western, non-native students has more than doubled.
Non-western, non-native students in higher professional education complete their degrees more often than earlier studies showed. However, they still lag behind students of Dutch origin. After five years about sixty percent of the native higher professional education students have earned their degrees, compared to forty percent of the non-natives.
In universities, the number of non-western, non-natives who earned master's or bachelor's degrees doubled. Here too the score is not yet even. After six years, about a third of the non-native students have completed their degree, as opposed to about half of the native Dutch students.
Trans. Henriëtte van Dorp
