Czechia very popular as study destination among foreigners, study finds
Czechia is a popular destination for foreign students, according to a university-wide survey conducted by the Czech National Agency for International Education and Research. Many of those who choose to study at Czech universities also end up finding work and staying in Czechia after they graduate. The field of international students is also becoming more diverse than in past years.
“My name is Tal and I have been studying for three years at the 1. Faculty of Medicine.”
Tal is from Israel, but also has EU citizenship. He says that a part of the reason why he is studying in the Czech Republic is because of the quality of the school. The surroundings are also not bad.
“The city, the culture, everything is accessible and convenient. You can buy whatever you want, you can get whatever you need. It is a European city within the EU. Everything is accounted for. Especially, being from a medical faculty, it is very easy to get healthcare for ourselves.”
In a nearby student café, I run into Prerna, an Indian post-doc, who cites very similar reasons behind her decision to study here.
“The reason I came here at all was because I was really impressed by the line of work that some of the people here have done.”
“As far as positives are concerned, first of all I definitely really like the place (laughs).
“I am at the institute of Mathematics and the reason I came here is because during my PhD I had been reading a lot of stuff that was written by Pavel Hrubeš. He has been writing some really nice papers and I was very much influenced by his work during my PhD, so I wanted to visit him. The reason I came here at all was because I was really impressed by the line of work that some of the people here have done.”
Tal and Prerna’s experiences echo those of a significant majority of the more than 4,500 foreign students who were recently surveyed by the Czech National Agency for International Education and Research (DSZ). A whopping 97 percent said that they would recommend Czechia as a study destination for their peers.
Jakub Tesař is the head of the Internationalization of Studies in the Czech Republic Unit of the agency. He says that he was himself surprised at just how positive the survey results were.
“We probably didn’t expect that the numbers would be that high and that there are so few barriers for international students or alumni to stay in the Czech Republic or work here and that if they decide to leave the Czech Republic, it is up to them.”
Nine out of ten alumni questioned in the survey said that studying in Czechia was useful for their career and nearly half of all of those who did their full degree in the country said that they ended up choosing to remain and work in Czechia. Just around a third chose to return home after finishing their studies.
The amount of foreign students who were able to find work in Czechia, both during and after their studies in the country, is something that particularly impressed Mr Tesař and his team.
“This phenomenon also doesn’t differ in terms of whether they are Slovak students, in whose case we expected this to be the case. Indeed, that would be usual, that they stay and work.
“However, we found that also other international students could stay and work. Another surprising discovery for us was that international students go on to continue following Czech politics after they leave.”
“Another surprising discovery for us was that international students go on to continue following Czech politics after they leave.”
Tal says he isn’t planning on staying in Czechia after his studies are over and it seems unlikely that he will become a connoisseur of Czechia’s political scene. However, he has managed to find relevant work alongside studying his degree.
“As for me, I am hired by the faculty to do some research. It wasn’t difficult to find clearance for it, it was just a heat of the moment thing. My roommate is a Japanese student who works in a Japanese restaurant. I think that for the most part it is worthwhile to look. I think that if you’ll look you will find.”
The relative ease of accessibility to find work, does not extend to everyone, says Tal. For those who come from certain third countries getting a work visa can be quite a hassle, he says. But for EU citizens, it is especially easy.
Finding work to help with tuition and living costs can be a necessity for some foreign students, as the price of the English taught courses can reach up to CZK 400,000 per year, depending on the faculty and study programme. Tal says that tuition at his faculty has been going up every year since English classes became available.
“For the past 15 years, ever since the international programme was started, I think it has been going up every single year.”
I guess that is also a consequence of you studying in English. The Czech courses are far cheaper, correct?
“Yes. For the Czech courses, it is subsidised, for the locals. Even EU members can study in Czech, if they speak the language. That is why we have so many Slovak students in the Czech speaking parallel. Because it is subsidised and the English parallel is privately paid for, the university needs these international funds to support itself.”
Jakub Tesař and his team made sure to specify between the wider international student group and Slovak students in several of the statistical findings. This was done, because the number of Slovak students at Czech universities has generally been at a far higher level than those of other foreigners.
There are many reasons for this phenomenon. Aside from cheaper courses, Slovaks also benefit from the two countries’ shared history and cultural closeness. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Slovaks therefore make up by far the largest minority nationality from an EU member state in the Czech Republic, according to a 2021 report by the Ministry of Interior.
In the survey itself, Slovaks accounted for around 50 percent of all alumni respondents, and a division between their most common responses and those of other foreigners was therefore seen as necessary.
Jakub Tesař say that in this regard there was one interesting dichotomy between Slovaks and the broader international student segment.
“Probably the biggest difference was the knowledge about the Czech Republic that students had before they came. Slovak students knew Czechia well and like it in advance of coming into the country. However, the students from other countries didn’t really know much about the Czech Republic, but they got to know it and liked it in the meantime.”
It was perhaps also for this reason that more international students than Slovak students said that their opinion of the Czech Republic improved after their period of study. While among Slovaks this rate lay at 47 percent, more than two-thirds of international students said that their opinion of the country improved.
The reasons that international students gave for liking Czechia more after studying in the country were mainly the establishment of social contacts, whether through new friends or family, and getting to know the country better in general. These top two reasons were the same among both the sample of respondents who chose to do their full degree in Czechia and those who opted for an Erasmus exchange in the country. Among the former, the good level of academic education and teachers was placed as the third most cited reason for an improvement of opinion about the country.
Some respondents also mentioned the beauty of the country, while others said that they felt freer than in other places while living in Czechia.
“Some students mentioned that the studies could be more practically oriented. Others, although a small portion, mentioned that Czechs could sometimes be friendlier to foreigners.”
Not all students had a positive experience of course. In this regard, Mr Tesař says that two factors were particularly noteworthy.
“Some students mentioned that the studies could be more practically oriented. Others, although a small portion, mentioned that Czechs could sometimes be friendlier to foreigners.”
Although in both the cases of full time student and Erasmus student respondents the number of people who said that their opinion of the country got worse was below 10 percent, those who didn’t like their experience cited hostility, discrimination and xenophobia as the main reasons. Some also didn’t like the “Czech mentality”, bureaucracy and quality of lecturers and classes.
Asked about whether he has come across any cases of discrimination towards foreign students, Tal says that he hasn’t. But he says this may simply be a consequence of “looking the part”.
“Only a small minority of the studying immigrants here are from less resourceful countries. It is a problem by itself to afford a move from a different continent and study here. So I would say that most of the students here look the part. Especially me. My last name is Slavic and I look like a local, so no one really discriminates against me.
“I do have Asian friends that might testify otherwise. Within the university itself, I think the only thing I may have come across is more of a discrepancy against women. It wasn’t very severe, but some of the much older professors, those in their eighties, may be inclined to prefer men as doctors over women.”
“Some of the much older professors, those in their eighties, may be inclined to prefer men as doctors over women.”
What do you mean by ‘inclined’?
“I haven’t experienced this myself. It is only hearsay. But I did hear from female friends of mine that professors remarked towards them something along the lines of them thinking women were not fit to hold the position of doctors unless they were not perfect in examinations. Apparently the bar that they set for women at a verbal examination was higher, or they just criticised them more.”
Nevertheless, discrimination ranked relatively low among foreign students’ negative encounters. According to Tal, it may also depend which city the foreign student is studying in. Prague, he says, can be more liberal in this respect than other cities in the country.
I asked Jakub Tesař what are the main takeaways from the study for his team.
“For us it’s really important for the recruitment of international students, because we can be very confident that it really does bring them a positive experience and career opportunities.
“I also think that it is an important survey for our partners, for example for Czech Centres or for embassies. This is because the survey showed that this group of students, or alumni, has a positive relationship to Czechia and that they can work with this group into the future as well.”
Do you think that the number of foreign students choosing Czechia as their study destination will increase further? And what sort of trends have you identified generally for the future?
“When we look at the past 20 years, we have been experiencing a constant growth in the number of international students studying in the Czech Republic during this period. We expect this growth to continue and that the diversity will also increase.
“The latter is, for example, because the number of Slovak foreign students is declining slowly in terms of proportion. All the while we are getting more students from new countries. For example there is strong growth among students from India, or other countries that were not usual in previous years.”
“There is strong growth among students from India, or other countries that were not usual in previous years.”
With the statistics suggesting an ever increasing share of Indians among foreign students in Czechia, I ask Prerna why she thinks the country has become a popular destination.
“Earlier there weren’t too many Indians who were coming here, but once a few of them did we started to find out by word of mouth that there is a lot of good research going on here. Now I know quite a few Indians who I hang out with.”
So you think it is mainly by word of mouth that the reputation of Czech universities has spread to Indian students?
“Yeah.”
The study was conducted from October to December 2021 and was published in June of this year. It can be found in full on the website of the National Agency for International Education and Research: https://www.dzs.cz/statistiky/vyzkum-mezi-zahranicnimi-absolventy-ceskych-vysokych-skol
