Student enrolments in post-secondary and tertiary institutions during academic year 2019-2020 increased by 3.1% over the preceding academic year, totalling 26,673, the National Statistics Office (NSO) has said.
Post-secondary students enrolled in sixth forms and other post-secondary institutions totalled 9,620 during the academic year 2019-2020, a decrease of 1.8% over the previous academic year.
“The largest proportion of post-secondary students (87.8%) were aged under 19 years. Foreign students enrolled in such institutions amounted to 995, accounting for 10.3% of the total students enrolled at post-secondary level,” the NSO said.
“The share of 16-17 year old students at the post-secondary level accounted for 76.9% of the 16-17 year old resident population, increasing by 1.6 percentage points from the previous academic year. The vast majority of students at the post-secondary level were enrolled in state-run institutions (83.7%).”
The NSO said that the most popular study orientation of students enrolled at the post-secondary level was the vocational orientation, which accounted for the majority (50.4%) of total students at the post-secondary level. The most popular field of study among vocational students was ‘Services’ (22.7%), followed by ‘Health and welfare’ (17.2%) and ‘Business, administration and law’ (14.4%).”
Tertiary students enrolled in tertiary level courses numbered 17,053 during academic year 2019-2020, an increase of 6.1% when compared to academic year 2018-2019. Female students comprised 57% of the total students enrolled at the tertiary level. The number of students at this level who were studying on a full-time basis amounted to 11,255, or 66% of the total. Part-time enrolments showed an increase of 15.5% over the previous academic year.
“The largest proportion of tertiary students (52.1%) were engaged in courses at ISCED level 6 (Bachelor’s or equivalent), followed by ISCED level 7 (Master’s or equivalent) with 33.4%. Most tertiary students were aged between 20 and 24 years (40.6%), followed by those under 20 years (19%). Female students outnumbered their male counterparts at almost all tertiary ISCED levels, except for ISCED 8 (PhD equivalent).”
During academic year 2019-2020, foreign students at the tertiary level totalled 2,498, equivalent to 14.6% of all tertiary enrolments. This accounted to an increase of 2.3 percentage points over the previous academic year. At the tertiary level, the most popular fields of study were ’Business, administration and law’ with 4,762 students or 27.9% of the total, and ‘Health and welfare’ with 2,982 students or 17.5% of the total. The least popular field of study at the tertiary level was ‘Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary’ scoring an uptake of only 0.4 per cent.