UvA gets more crowded: fewer bachelor- but significantly more master’s students
UvA’s student population has grown again, preliminary intake and enrolment figures show. This is mainly due to the master’s programmes, where the number of first-year students rose by almost 15 per cent. On the contrary, enrolment in bachelors is falling a little. Is this good or bad news for the UvA?
A shortage of teaching spaces, not enough student accommodation and general crowding: although the UvA also earns money from its students, the university is keen to keep the student population somewhat in check. If we head towards 50,000 students, the UvA will not be able to cope, warned then college president Geert ten Dam as recently as two years ago. It is not yet that far, the provisional intake and enrolment figures show, but the total number of students has indeed risen again.
This article is about the provisional intake and enrolment figures. These were publicly announced by the UvA this morning and usually give a good picture of the official figures, which are usually announced in February.
According to the latest (provisional) figures - benchmark: mid-October - the university has 44,005 students. In autumn 2023, the figure was 43,039. That means the number of students has increased by 2.2 per cent, which is a sharper increase than last year, when the figures rose by 1.7 per cent, but still significantly less than in peak year 2020/21. Back then, the entire student population increased by a whopping 9.1 per cent.
Numerus fixus
That peak now seems to have repercussions on this academic year’s figures, the UvA reasons in a press release. After all, the number of first-year bachelor’s students rose sharply around those years, and those students will now have started their masters roughly. It partly explains the hefty influx of master’s students at the UvA this academic year, which reached 7,596 students. An increase of no less than 14.9 per cent compared to last year, when only 6,612 students started a master’s degree.
The bachelor’s programmes, on the other hand, show a different (and for the UvA more favourable) picture. While enrolment in master’s programmes rose by almost 15 per cent, the number of first-year students in bachelor’s programmes actually fell by 5.4 per cent. This is mainly due to the intake in the bachelor’s programme in communication sciences, which almost halves. The reason for this is the introduction of a numerus fixus for the entire programme, which includes both the Dutch- and English-language track.
Internationalisation
The downside, however, is that this measure seems to have deterred mainly Dutch-speaking students. Something that does not exactly help the balance between English- and Dutch-speaking students within the Communication Studies programme - one of the UvA’s important goals alongside bilingualism. Last academic year, the ratio of Dutch-speaking to English-speaking students was 41.9 per cent to 58.1 respectively in communication studies, now it is 37.1 per cent to 62.9.
UvA-wide, internationalisation did come to some halt, at both masters and bachelor’s levels. For instance, the intake of Dutch students at the bachelors fell by only 3.6 per cent, while the intake of students within the European Economic Area (EEA) fell by 8.5 per cent and from outside the EEA by 6.8 per cent.
Thus, relative to last year, the UvA sees both fewer first-year and fewer international students in its bachelor’s programmes, and the latter is also noticeable in its masters. Given the further increase in the total student population, this can justifiably be called a mitigating factor.
