"Moet ik blijven or should I go?" The influence of Dutch language on international students' decision to stay in the Netherlands after graduating

Abstract

As the number of international students in the Netherlands is growing every year, it is important to know whether they plan on staying after university. This study will be mapping out if international students have the intention to stay in the Netherlands after finishing their studies, and it will look at the influence that learning Dutch has on their decision to stay or not. For this quantitative research, 101 international students and alumni who currently live in the Netherlands filled out a survey about their motivation to learn Dutch, their self-reported Dutch skills, and whether they are planning on staying after finishing their degree. They were also given the opportunity to discuss the way in which their university stimulated them to learn Dutch, and what their university could improve in the future. In this research, statistical analyses were used, including the Pearson correlation, and independent samples t-test. This research has found that an international student’s self-reported level of Dutch speaking and interaction skills are significantly higher when they are planning on staying in the Netherlands after graduating. These findings could imply that learning Dutch does have an influence on international students’ motivation to stay after their studies, or that students decide to learn Dutch because they plan on staying in the Netherlands. Furthermore, students were generally unsatisfied with the way their schools offered Dutch classes, and would like to see more affordable classes, would like their schools to provide more information, and would like to see various levels of Dutch classes.