Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) - The number of students in North Rhine-Westphalia is expected to decrease slightly again. According to initial estimates by the universities, around 745,000 students are enrolled in the winter semester that is now starting, as the NRW Ministry of Science announced in Düsseldorf on Tuesday. This means a decrease of 1.5 percent or 11,000 students compared to the winter semester 2021/2022.
Among first-year students, the decline was 2.6 percent to 87,000. This means that around 2,500 fewer students are enrolled in the first semester than a year ago.
The Ministry of Science explained that the number of students in North Rhine-Westphalia remained at a high level. In its calculations, the Conference of Ministers of Education of the Federal States assumes that the number of students in Germany will remain the same or fall slightly over the next few years.
The NRW State Statistical Office had already recorded a decline in the number of students for the 2021/22 winter semester. Most students were in 2018/19 with almost 774,000.
In NRW there are a total of 14 public universities, 16 public universities for applied sciences, 7 state art and music universities, 26 recognized private and church universities and 5 administrative universities.
