“Our methodology is very similar to that used for election forecasts”

Could you start by briefly explaining why the DAAD has been carrying out Snapshot Surveys of international student enrolments in the winter semester for several years now?

The original reason for our first Snapshot Survey in the 2020/21 winter semester was the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the DAAD, the universities and university policy-makers naturally asked ourselves how much of an impact the pandemic would have on the number of international students in Germany. The problem was that the official student numbers from the Federal Statistical Office are only published in August of the following year, almost nine months after the start of the respective winter semester. However, we wanted to be able to assess the extent of the pandemic’s impact on the number of international students earlier. We therefore decided to conduct a survey of the state-recognised universities in Germany, i.e. those universities whose student numbers are also included in the official student statistics of the Federal Statistical Office. Fortunately, more than 160 universities took part in this first Snapshot Survey, so that we had a relatively good data basis for drawing up a forecast for the number of international students in that winter semester. And when the Federal Statistical Office finally published the official student data in August 2021, it turned out that our forecast was also pretty accurate.

Against this background, we then decided not to leave it at this one Snapshot Survey, but to carry out corresponding surveys in subsequent years in order to be able to estimate the development of international student numbers as early as possible. This information is not only very helpful for us at the DAAD, but also for the universities. As an individual university, you never know whether the development of student numbers at your own university will largely correspond to the development at other, comparable universities or whether you might deviate upwards or downwards. When analysing our results, we therefore always work with a breakdown into so-called university clusters, i.e. a breakdown into groups of university types and sizes that are as similar as possible. In this way, the universities can then compare the development of their own student numbers with the development in their respective university cluster.

How exactly do you go about forecasting student numbers?

Ultimately, our methodology is very similar to that used for election forecasts. Based on a sample of universities, we calculate a forecast for the universities as a whole. However, one important difference to election forecasts is that we do not use a random sample. In contrast to election surveys, we have the advantage that we can invite all universities that are relevant for our forecast to take part in the survey. However, we naturally have no influence on which universities ultimately take part in the survey and whether this results in a reasonably representative selection of universities. We can estimate this by dividing the universities into the aforementioned university clusters, as this at least allows us to recognise whether there is a sufficient number of universities in each of these university clusters to create a reliable forecast for the entire cluster on this basis. Fortunately, thanks to the great willingness of the universities to participate, this has so far been the case in each of our Snapshot Surveys.

The forecasts for the individual clusters are then combined at the end to produce an overall forecast. Of course, we also take into account the empirical values from the previous Snapshot Surveys. For example, we now know that the development of student numbers at the universities that take part in our Snapshot Surveys is somewhat more dynamic overall than at the other universities. Here, too, our forecast works in a similar way to election forecasts, which always take into account deviations between the respondents in the sample and the population of all eligible voters.

Finally, something else that should be mentioned: In our survey, we concentrate on universities, universities of applied sciences and colleges of art and music. This is because almost all international students in Germany are enrolled at these three types of higher education institution. Administrative universities and theological universities are therefore not part of our survey.

Regarding the results of the current Snapshot Survey: How did the number of international students develop in the 2023/24 winter semester according to the DAAD forecast?

The most important and very pleasing finding is certainly that the number of international students has once again risen significantly. According to our forecast, around 380,000 to 390,000 students will be enrolled in Germany in the 2023/24winter semester, compared to around 368,000 in the 2022/23 winter semester. This corresponds to an increase of four to six per cent and another all-time high. The positive trend in figures is even clearer if we only look at newly enrolled international students. Here, we are forecasting an increase to around 85,000 to 92,000 students in the 2023/24 winter semester, from around 80,000 students in the 2022/23 winter semester. The growth rate could therefore be up to 15 per cent.

It is striking that the positive trend in student numbers now affects Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes in roughly equal measure. In the previous year, the growth mainly affected students on Master’s programmes, while the pandemic-related gap in study preparation or preparatory courses obviously still had an impact on Bachelor’s programmes. However, this gap now appears to have been closed, which is why the numbers in the Bachelor’s degree programmes are now developing just as positively as in the Master’s degree programmes.

A further normalisation of the trend can be seen in the number of international guest and exchange students, where the percentage increase compared to the previous year has obviously slowed down considerably. The strong growth in the previous year was most likely still part of a pandemic-related catch-up effect: a large proportion of the guest and exchange stays that began last year were probably stays that could only be completed later than originally planned due to the pandemic. This catch-up effect now appears to have largely come to an end, which is why many universities are now seeing a decline in new enrolments of international guest and exchange students compared to the strong above-average growth in the previous year.

In light of the new Bavarian Higher Education Act, this time the Snapshot Survey also asked about the Bavarian universities’ plans to introduce tuition fees for students from non-EU countries. What was the response here?

Of the 20 Bavarian universities that took part in the Snapshot Survey, three universities stated that they had already decided to introduce tuition fees for international students. According to the survey, six other universities have not yet made a decision in this regard. The remaining eleven universities will not introduce tuition fees for non-EU students for the time being. However, it should be noted once again that the universities that took part in our survey are not a representative sample of the 56 state-recognised universities in Bavaria. For example, in contrast to most other federal states, no colleges of art and music in Bavaria took part in the survey. It is therefore only a first picture regarding the universities’ plans for introducing such tuition fees.

It also shows that there will probably be a wide range of tuition fees for non-EU students in terms of their exact structure. The Technical University of Munich is so far the only university in Bavaria that has already published its fee concept. The fees here range from 2,000 to 3,000 euros for Bachelor’s programmes and 4,000 to 6,000 euros for Master’s programmes. At other universities, however, the fees will probably be significantly lower, as shown by the feedback from the universities in our survey.