About forty percent of PhD candidates in the Netherlands is foreign. Their PhD track is relatively expensive, because they are generally paid as employees rather than students.

Still, foreign PhD students are not a cost factor, as the CBP Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Anaysis (CBP) has calculated. Through taxes, they repay amply for their academic training. And should they take jobs that might otherwise have been filled by Dutch PhD graduates, the latter will find other positions. Foreign PhD candidates do not cause extra unemployment among natives.

After ten years, approximately half of foreign PhD graduates still works in the Netherlands, meaning they also pay taxes here. And since foreigners can be found in the private sector more often, where salaries are higher, on average they pay more taxes than Dutch PhD graduates.

According to CBP, the positive effects of foreign PhD graduates cannot be expressed in monetary value – it’s bigger than that. They come up with new ideas and help create global knowledge networks. It’s just that such effects are hard to measure for CBP.

In 2012, CBP calculated that the same is true for foreign students. They make the state millions every year as well.