Internationalization organization Nuffic is dissatisfied with the reliability of its annual Bison monitor, which was published last week. Internationalization director Teekens: `When composing the report, we found our information on Dutch universities to be limited to the information that students, universities and colleges give us voluntarily. Contrary to Germany and France, institutes here are not required to release statistics on international mobility. Because every institute and country measures it differently, we are really comparing apples to oranges. The only hard data that we can depend on is the number of our own international scholarships, but that is only a small segment of the actual mobility in higher education.'
If it were up to Nuffic, regulations would be put in place quickly to regulate the registration of international mobility at universities and colleges. `Then we could compare the annual reports to provide a clearer overall picture. Until then, it's still strange to hear at the start of the academic year that `more' international students need to be brought to the Netherlands when no one knows exactly how many we have now.'
Teekens acknowledges that it is far from easy to create a uniform registration method, but points out that considering only nationality is certainly outdated. Teekens: `If you look at the Atlas of student mobility, you will discover that Dutch education is considered to be `favored by students from Islamic countries.' Why? Because all the Turks and Moroccans living here are considered foreign students. Using passports as a selection criterion is hopelessly outdated. We really need to consider international movements.'
The figures do show that the number of foreigners studying in the Netherlands is growing. `However, for a number of a reasons we are still running behind compared to the rest of Europe. One reason is that we are not counting PhD students - in the Netherlands they are considered employees - while that is internationally the most mobile group in higher education. Also, our regulations for students from outside the EU are very strict, and we have trouble selling ourselves as belonging to the “international top.” For most international students, we are a second choice. We need to work on an improved branding of Dutch higher education.'
Trans. Jeroen Latour
