Half of Luxembourg's students are foreigners

According to Eurostat, in 2023, 1.76 million foreign students will study at universities and other higher education institutions in the European Union, i.e. 8.4% of all higher education students. These figures reflect an important trend: Europe remains one of the world's main centres of academic mobility.

However, the picture varies greatly by country. The absolute leader in terms of the share of international students is Luxembourg, where they account for 52.3% of the total number of students. This high concentration is explained by the country's small scale, geographical location and multilingual educational environment. In second place is Malta (29.6%), with Cyprus (22.3%) rounding out the top three. In the opposite situation are Greece (3.0%), Croatia (3.7%) and Spain (4.3%), where international students make up only a small part of the university population.

The geography of students' origin is no less interesting. In twenty EU countries, the main group of incoming students is from other European countries. This figure is particularly high in Slovakia (91.3%), Slovenia (89.4%) and Croatia (89.0%). But there are other patterns: in Ireland (45.0%), Finland (43.3%), Germany (40.1%) and Italy (36%), the bulk of the international student population is from Asia. In France, more than half of international students are from Africa (52.3%), and in Spain almost half (46.7%) come from the Caribbean, Central and South America.

These differences emphasise that student mobility is not only a matter of academic choice, but also the result of historical, cultural and economic ties. For example, France's colonial past explains the significant influx of students from African countries, while Spain's cultural proximity and common language with Latin America are influenced by the country.