Do another study after a completed study? Then you will pay even more
The costs for students doing a second or subsequent study at the UvA have gone up considerably. Some programmes will cost as much as 48 percent more next academic year than this year, while others are ‘only’ 15 or 34 percent higher. How come?
Suppose you have already completed a university degree, but you find that you actually want to pursue another university course. For example, you want to become a historian at the UvA, while you have already completed a law degree at the UvA or another university. Then you will not pay the statutory tuition fee (next academic year 2,601 euros for full-time students, except for students of PPLE or the AUC), but the so-called institutional tuition fee rate (ICG rate) - just like students from outside the so-called European Economic Area (EEA).
That fee varies from one programme to another, but is significantly higher than the statutory tuition fee everywhere. For a bachelor’s from the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), for example, you will pay 10,005 euros in academic year 2025-2026 and for a bachelor’s in Medicine as much as 31,600 euros. Most of the other ICG fees are somewhere in between.
Substantial increase
What is striking is that these ICG fees for next academic year have risen sharply across the board. This is evident after comparing the UvA’s so-called ‘enrolment decisions’ - documents in which the university sets and publishes these fees each year. To give you an idea: for a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Humanities, the ICG fee will come to 12,900 euros next year. An increase of no less than 48 per cent compared to this year, when the fee was 8,700 euros. Other courses are also rising, albeit less sharply. Take the ICG fee for PPLE, which is up 34 per cent (from €13,000 to €17,500). Or FEB bachelors, which ‘only’ increase by 15 per cent (from 8,700 to the aforementioned 10,005 euros).
Where do all these differences between programmes come from? And why is the institutional tuition fee rate so high in the first place?
State contribution
To start with the latter, crucial is the following: for students who have not yet completed their studies (and come from a country within the EEA, the university receives a state contribution from the Ministry of Education & Science. This does not happen in the case of a student who has already completed a study, and is now embarking on a second or subsequent study.
This lost revenue is passed on to the student in question to cover the cost of his or her education. But the way this was calculated was no longer correct, so the ICG fees no longer covered costs. A UvA spokesperson reveals that universities, including the UvA, have been receiving too little money from OCW for years. “The cost of education is much higher than is reimbursed from the state contribution. As a result, our method of determining the ICG rate was no longer correct, which we have now adjusted.” Then there is inflation. “That has been very high and as a result we have had to raise our rates substantially,” says the UvA press officer.
Low, high or top
Why some courses show a higher increase in ICG fees than others is a somewhat more technical story. ICG fees are divided into three budget classes: “low”, “high” and “top”. In principle, courses that have relatively lower costs fall under “low”, while expensive courses such as medicine (because of, among other things, a lot of practical training and all the materials required) fall under “top”.
What is new is that the standard fees next year have been supplemented by a surcharge for education and research, in addition to the variable parts that were already there. Unlike the variable parts, the fixed parts are the same for every programme, regardless of whether it is categorised as low, high or top (the amounts do differ between bachelors, 1-year masters, 2-year and 3-year masters). The introduction of a fixed part hits harder for programmes categorised as “low”, because the variable parts there are lower than for “top”. This therefore creates a relatively higher increase in the ICG fee for programmes that fall under the standard “low” fee.
Besides that surcharge in the form of the fixed parts, the variable parts have been re-indexed and thus increased. Another component in the calculation method is the amount that the university gets from a regular student in the form of the statutory tuition fee; that amount will also go up next year. Due to the new calculation method, the standard fees for bachelor”s programmes have risen relatively more than the standard fee for a one-year master’s programme, says the UvA spokesperson.
Enrolment figures
To complicate matters, it is also true that deviations are possible. A faculty can submit a request to the UvA to deviate from the standard, to go above it or, on the contrary, to work towards the higher fee in steps. This depends on policy choices; for example, if a programme wants to attract enough students, it may be useful to temporarily go below the standard rate. After all, the less pricey the ICG fee, the more students will be willing to enrol in the study in question.
Whether the increased ICG fees will have a strong impact on the inflow of students - both those seeking a second or subsequent study and those from outside the EEA - will have to be seen. Soon, the preliminary intake figures will be released from the UvA. These usually give a good picture of the official intake figures.
