The share of foreign students at universities in the Czech Republic has increased by an average of 3% a year over the past decade. Photo credit: KB / BD.
Prague, May 22 (CTK) – The number of foreigners studying at universities in the Czech Republic has been steadily increasing; 18% of students were foreign nationals in 2022, according to data released by the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) today.
The share of foreign students at universities in the Czech Republic has increased by an average of 3% a year over the past decade. Last year, 55,000 foreigners were studying in the country.
In 2022, the total number of students at public and private universities in the country increased by about a thousand to 304,500. However, there were about 76,000 less university students than in 2012. The decrease in the number of students was partly caused by the drop in the number of people in their twenties, as a result of demographic developments in the country.
Foreigners from 166 countries were studying in universities in the Czech Republic last year. Slovaks remained the largest group, accounting for 38% of the total, followed by Russians and Ukrainians, who were also among the largest national groups in previous years. The number of Ukrainian university students last year was 6,224, according to CSU.
The data show that after eight years of decline, the number of university students started to increase slightly in 2019, but the number of graduates has been steadily decreasing over the past decade.
Data from Eurostat shows that the Czech Republic is among the European countries with the lowest share of tertiary graduates aged 25 to 34; about 35% of Czechs had completed this level of education in 2021. In the EU on average, two-fifths of young people had completed higher education by 2021.
More than nine out of ten students in the Czech Republic attended one of the 26 public universities last year, and 28,000 attended one of 32 private schools.
Charles University in Prague had the most students (51,000), followed by Masaryk University (32,000), and Palacky University in Olomouc (23,000).
