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Student population grows by 5 per cent

The total number of students at Wageningen University grew this academic year by around 5 per cent compared with the 2017-2018 academic year. A total of 12,008 students are now enrolled, according to provisional figures from Education & Student Affairs (ESA).
Luuk Zegers

The development of the number of students studying at Wageningen University, between 2005 and 2018. © Resource

The intake of first-year Bachelor’s students is up 2.5 per cent, from 1637 in October 2017 to 1678 now. That growth is concentrated in the new English-language Bachelor’s programmes, says Eric de Munck of ESA. The intake of first-year Master’s students (including students who did their Bachelor’s at Wageningen) has grown by more than 2 per cent, from 2315 in October 2017 to 2365 now. This increase is largely due to growth in the number of internal students. Last year the Master’s intake grew by as much as 5 per cent.

‘The intake seems to be stabilizing a bit,’ concludes De Munck. Despite this, the student population as a whole is still expanding (see figure). This is the knock-on effect of the big increases in recent years, explains De Munck. It is because the cohorts that are leaving are smaller than the cohorts that are still doing their degree. ‘Growth in the intake always has this kind of impact in following years on overall student numbers.’

The number of ‘linkage programme’ students (mainly students from applied universities who take a six-month programme to prepare for a Master’s) has fallen by almost 22 per cent, from 82 in autumn 2017 to 64 now. De Munck is not surprised. ‘That number is always fluctuating but has hovered around 70 in recent years. It’s not a striking decline.’

BSc programmes with biggest intake:Food Technology177 first-years
Biology176 first-years
Nutrition and Health148 first-years
MSc programmes with biggest intake:Food Technology181 institutional first-years*
Environmental Sciences103 institutional first-years*
Nutrition & Health92 institutional first-years*

*First-year Master’s students who did not do their Bachelor’s at Wageningen University. The total Master’s intake per programme is not known.

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