Czechs among university students in the Czech Republic decreased again last year, while foreigners increased

Update: 22.05.2023 12:58

Prague – The number of Czech university students in the Czech Republic decreased again last year after two years of growth, while the number of foreigners at these schools is steadily increasing. Fewer than 250,000 Czechs studied at one of the Czech universities in 2022, roughly 2,000 less year-on-year. Among foreigners, 55,000 people were enrolled in higher education in the country. Their number has increased by an average of three percent per year over the last ten years, and last year foreigners made up 18 percent of all university students. It follows from data and informationwhich was provided to CTK today by the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ).

Last year, the total number of students at public and private universities in the Czech Republic increased by less than a thousand to 304,500 people. Compared to 2012, however, there were approximately 76,000 fewer. According to the CZSO, the decrease in the number of people aged 20 to 29 years as a result of the demographic development in the Czech Republic was among other factors.

Last year, foreigners from 166 countries studied at universities in the Czech Republic. Slovaks remained the most numerous group, who, according to statistics, accounted for 38 percent of foreign university students. They were followed by Russians and Ukrainians, who were among the most numerous groups of foreigners even in previous years. The number of Ukrainian university students last year was 6,224, the CZSO reported.

At the same time, statistical data show that, after eight years of decline, the number of university students began to increase slightly in 2019, but on the other hand, the number of graduates has been steadily decreasing over the last decade. “In 2022, 58,699 people graduated from university in the Czech Republic, which is 1,900 fewer than in the previous year. Compared to the record year of 2012, when 94,090 students graduated from university, their number even dropped by more than 35,000, i.e. by 38 percent. Vendula Kašparová from the Department of Development Statistics of the CZSO commented on the trend. She added that last year, after five years, the number of students enrolled for the first time at Czech universities also fell.

In 2021, the Czech Republic according to data Eurostat it was among the European countries with the lowest proportion of tertiary education graduates aged 25 to 34. The year before last, roughly 35 percent of Czechs in the aforementioned population had completed this education. Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy and Romania fared somewhat worse. In the entire European Union, in 2021, two fifths of young people will have completed university studies.

More than nine out of ten students in the Czech Republic studied at one of the 26 public universities last year, and 28,000 attended one of the 32 private schools. Men predominated among university students until 2003, and last year there were 34,000 more female university students than students, who were around 135,000 at universities. “If 21 percent of women aged 20-29 studied university in our country in 2022, it was only 16 percent for men,” the statisticians added.

Last year, the largest part of students was at universities in Prague, two fifths of them attended them. Another fifth studied at Brno schools. Among individual schools, Charles University in Prague had the most students, with 51,000, followed by Masaryk University in Brno with 32,000 students and Palacký University in Olomouc with 23,000.