The number of students at Radboud University is already declining slightly for the third year in a row. The management and law faculties are shrinking more than other faculties, as academic year's enrolment figures show. The number of students is also expected to continue to decline in the long term.

This academic year, Radboud University as a whole has 298 fewer students than one year ago: a decrease of 1.2%. The number of students at Nijmegen University is declining slightly already for the third year in a row, In total, the university now has 24,104 students.

This is evident from Radboud University’s 1 October figures: the annual overview of the number of enrolled and upcoming students.

Financial deficit

Two faculties are seen to be shrinking just a little more than the rest. The management faculty has 295 students or 6.1% fewer students than last year. The intake of new students at the Elinor Ostrom building has already been declining since 2022.

In 2021, there were still 5,162 students studying at the Nijmegen School of Management, compared to only 4,513 today. It is unknown whether this was influenced by the Faculty’s financial deficit and the ensuing turmoil.

The Faculty of Law has also experienced a more substantial decline for two years in a row: the Grotius building has 138 students fewer than last year and 430 fewer than in 2022, a decline of 4.4% over one year and 12.5% over two years, respectively.

The Faculty of Science (-25% or -0.7%) and the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religiewetenschappen (-2%) are losing relatively fewer students.

Not all faculties are losing out, incidentally. The Faculty of Social Sciences, for many years the largest Nijmegen faculty, has seen an increase of 108 students compared to last academic year. The Faculty of Medical Sciences improved by 38 students and the Faculty of Arts by 15 students.

The intake of students enrolling at Radboud University as a whole is also declining for the first time. For the university as a whole, this represents a decrease of 197 students or 3.6%. The Faculty of Art (+7.1% or 41 students) and, to a lesser extent, the Faculty of Medical Sciences (+0.2% or 1 student)), were the only ones to experience a small increase in new students.

Social developments

The number of students at Dutch universities is expected to decline further in the longer term though, Radboud University being no exception. This emerges from the forecasts of student grant provider DUO. Some 21,000 students are still predicted for Radboud University as a whole in 2037.

‘Social, demographic and political developments and choices can have quite an impact on student numbers’

‘Whether the decline is really going to be as substantial as currently predicted is difficult to predict,’ says Han Werts, head of the Radboud University Institutional Research department. ‘The recent multiple downward revisions of the reference estimates show the complexity of making reliable long-term forecasts. Social, demographic as well as political developments and choices can have quite an impact on student numbers.’

Romania and Hungary

It was already announced last week that the number of international students at Radboud University has fallen by 3.5% per cent compared to last year. The university now has 2,490 international students: 10.3% of its total number of students.

Most students at Radboud University are from the Netherlands (21,370). Germany comes second with 733 students, but that is almost 17% less than last academic year and 38% less than five years ago. The top ten also includes Greece (156 students), Poland (151), Romania (151), Italy (129), Bulgaria (118), Spain (113), Hungary (86), and Turkey (86).

Top in 2021

In 2021, Radboud University numbered 24.678 students: the largest number in the university’s history. The following year, student numbers declined for the first time in a decade. In 2012, the university had fewer than 18,000 students. Compared to three years ago, the number of students at Radboud University has fallen by 2.1%. By contrast, this number has remained almost equal compared to five years ago. If you compare it to it a decade ago, the number of students has increased by 25.6%.