The student debt that students and former students have with the government continues to increase, reports the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). In 2022, the average student debt was again more than the year before. Since the introduction of the loan system in 2015, the average student debt has increased by 3,500 euros per (former) student to almost 16,000 euros at the beginning of this year.
The total student debt of all (former) students added together has doubled since 2015. At the beginning of 2022, this group had a joint debt of 25.7 billion euros. Incidentally, CBS adds up students who are still in their studies, and therefore still accruing debt, and people who have already finished.
The number of people with a student debt of more than 30,000 euros has also increased since 2015. In that year, about 120,000 people had at least 30,000 euros in student debt, in 2022 this has increased to almost 300,000 people. More than 100,000 people had a debt of more than 50,000 euros this year and 1,400 of them were more than a ton in the red. “In previous years that was significantly less,” according to CBS.
Relatively speaking, the number of students with a student debt of more than 30,000 euros has also increased. While in 2015, about 11 percent of students and former students with a student loan had an amount higher than 30,000 euros, this was over 18 percent at the beginning of 2022.
In 2015, the student loan system replaced the basic grant, a monthly allowance that students do not have to repay under certain conditions. The cabinet decided this year to reintroduce the basic grant, from the 2023/2024 academic year, in order to lower the financial threshold for studying. Student clubs point out that the proposed amounts for the reintroduced grant are too low and that students still face a high student debt. The supplementary grant for students of parents with an income below a certain amount is also not sufficient, budget institute Nibud concluded. These students, whose parents do not have the financial scope to contribute sufficiently to their child’s study time, will then still have to work or borrow.