- Student
- 22/09/2025
Before the COVID-19 crisis, about a quarter of bachelor’s and master’s students spent a few months abroad to take courses at another institution. This was referred to as being “credit-mobile.”
Lockdowns
The lockdowns during the global pandemic made such trips more difficult and less appealing. In the 2021/2022 academic year, only 11 percent of all graduates from universities of applied sciences and universities had taken courses abroad at some point during their studies—most likely before the crisis began.
That share has now risen to 17 percent of all recent bachelor’s and master’s graduates in higher education, CBS reports. That equals one in six students.
University students are more likely to go abroad during their bachelor’s program (22 percent) than during their master’s (14 percent). Among bachelor’s students at universities of applied sciences, 17 percent spent some time abroad, while this is almost unheard of in applied-science master’s programs and two-year associate degree programs.
The most mobile group in higher education are international students at universities of applied sciences. They came to the Netherlands for a full bachelor’s program and apparently kept their appetite for travel: 28 percent earned part of their credits in another country. Among the much larger group of Dutch applied-science bachelor’s students, that share is 16 percent.
For university bachelor’s students, the difference is slightly smaller, but the same pattern holds: international students are just a bit more likely to take a course abroad than Dutch students, 25 versus 21 percent. In the (often one-year) university master’s programs, the numbers are very close: 13 and 14 percent.
Full program abroad
The figures do not include Dutch students who pursue a full degree abroad. That applies to almost 2 percent. The most popular destination is Belgium, followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States.
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