The number of students from non-EU countries, such as Belarus, Vietnam and India, has been rising in recent years. Photo credit: KB/BD.
Prague, Dec 14 (CTK) – A record number of 52,109 foreign students were enrolled in Czech universities in 2021, 4.4% more than in previous year, according to data released yesterday by the Czech Statistical Office (CSU). The largest group among them were Slovaks, followed by Russians and Ukrainians.
A total of 304,073 people studied at universities in the Czech Republic last year, with the share of foreign students at 17.1%.
There were 26,221 students from other EU countries. Their share among the total number of foreign students has decreased markedly in the past decade, from 68.8% in 2012 to 50.3% last year.
This decline was partly due to the falling number of students from Slovakia, who are the largest group of foreign students at Czech universities. Last year, there were 21,913 of them. The second largest group were German students (1,041), with all other EU nationalities numbering less than 1,000.
After Slovaks, the largest national groups of foreign students at Czech universities are Russians, Ukrainians and Kazakhs.
In 2021, there were 8,575 Russian students, an increase of 30% compared to five years ago.
The number of Ukrainian and Kazakh students rose by about 40% during this period, to 4,613 and 2,720, respectively.
The number of students from these and other third countries, including Belarus, Vietnam and India, has been rising in recent years.
Last year, Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Indians and Belarusians accounted for 71.5% of the overall number of students from third countries studying at Czech universities.
Foreign students were most often enrolled in medical and social care programs, as well as trade, law, administration, and information and communication technology (ICT), wrote CSU spokesman Jan Cieslar.
In 2021, the highest number of foreign students were at Prague’s Charles University, which accounted for 50.9% of the total number at Czech universities. This was followed by Brno’s Masaryk University, then the universities of Olomouc and Ostrava.
