Foreign Students From Nearly 115 Countries Studied Higher Education in Bulgaria
Foreign students from nearly 115 countries studied higher education in our country in the 2017/2018 school year, show data from a Eurostat analysis of mobility for higher education in EU countries, Offnews.bg reports.
The total number of foreign students for the said period was 14,000 and for the Bulgarian students - 207,000, the share of foreigners in our universities was about 6 percent, according to Eurostat. The share of foreigners enrolled in our higher education institutions has increased significantly over the years, with their number increasing by 10 percent compared to the 2015/2016 academic year, and by 33 percent over the 2013/2014 period, BTA said.
The highest number of foreign students from Greece was 26 percent, or about 3,600 people. This is followed by students from the UK - 14 percent or about 2000, from Turkey - 14 percent or 1 400, from Germany - 8 percent or 1 120, and from Ukraine - 5 percent or 700 students.
Foreign PhD students during the period in question were 529 people out of a total of 6 546 PhD students in the country, the largest being the number of PhD students from Greece - 138 people, from Turkey - 75 people and from Kazakhstan - 50 people. There are 1 student each from such exotic destinations as Seychelles, Mexico, Cuba, Angola, Kenya, Eritrea and Tajikistan.
In the 2017/2018 academic year, there were around 1.7 million mobile students from all over the world, as well as from EU countries. The share of mobile students was 8% of all enrolled students in the EU for the period. The highest proportion of mobile students is registered in Luxembourg - 47 per cent of all students in the country. Cyprus is followed by 23 percent, Austria 17 percent, the Czech Republic 13 percent, Denmark and the Netherlands 11 percent each. At the other pole, among the countries with the lowest share of registered foreign students are Croatia, Spain and Greece - 3 per cent, Slovenia, Poland and Lithuania - 4 per cent and more.
The analysis also covers data from the European Erasmus Plus Student Exchange Program, which helps students to spend their studies at another higher education institution abroad. According to the Erasmus program, there are nearly 193,000 mobile undergraduate and graduate students in the EU during the period, Eurostat reports.
The most preferred destination under the Erasmus Plus program was Spain - 21,300 graduates. Germany is followed by 18,400, the United Kingdom - 12,400, Italy - 11,500 and the Netherlands - 11,000 mobile students. These five countries were the top destinations for nearly two-thirds of all mobile students who had completed undergraduate programs during the period.
The most preferred destination under the Erasmus program was France - 20 500 people, followed by Italy - 15 000 and Germany - 14 600. These three countries make up almost two-thirds of the mobile students who have received an Erasmus masters degree ".