Although the total number of students at Czech Republic universities has been falling down since 2010, the number of international students is increasing steadily, official statistics show.
Out of 299,054 students enrolled in Czech Republic’s higher education, foreign students accounted for 15 percent of them as of the end of last year. Up to the same time, the number of foreign students in the Czech Republic reached at 43,831 students, 334 more than the year ago.
The country is becoming an attractive place to study because of cheaper tuitions, lower living costs and high-quality education as well. Czech Republic’s institutions are very focused on attracting more international students and tend to see upon them as a huge asset to local economies and more.
International qualified graduates who decide to stay in the country after they finish their studies contribute to the national labor market while those who go back home help create business contacts, Ministry of Education states.
Czech public universities are gaining attention from foreign students because they offer free-tuition education for students who are able to attend courses in the Czech language.
A considerable amount of them chooses to seek higher education at private institutions which, although charge students with tuition fees, in the end, are less expensive compared to universities in other countries.
Despite the fact that foreign students attending courses taught in the Czech language are free of tuition fees, they must cover living expenses, generating this way a profit to the country’s economy.
The ministry’s statistics read that the country annually earns on average of 150,000 crowns from a foreign student. In total, international students contributed with 1.16 billion crowns in 2016 to the state’s economy.
Even though at the moment Slovaks students share the highest portion of foreign students in Czech universities, student population may soon be much more diverse. At a time when students’ perception of education is changing, there still is a chance for the Czech Republic to become a top attraction in international education.