Enrolled, but not hired

TU Delft strives to make international students feel comfortable by arranging housing, organising insurance, and opening bank account. However, one very important issue for international students is often neglected. That issue is finding a job.

The recent increase in tuition fees has made working for non-EU international students more important than before. A typical student job might involve working at the university or in supermarkets or restaurants. However, the language barrier prevents many international students from qualifying for work.

All of the bachelor courses at TU Delft (with the exception of the Aerospace faculty) are taught in Dutch, preventing most international students from working as student assistants. Work in the service industry is also nearly impossible, since most employees want staff to speak the local language. Even if a student succeeds at finding a job, Dutch law puts a number of barriers between non-EU international students and employment. First, non-EU international students are only permitted to work 10 hours per week. However, other European countries don’t put the same restrictive burden on non-EU international students. For example, in Germany a non-EU student can work for 25 hours per week; in France, 19.5 hours per week and in Belgium, 20 hours per week. Further, students must have a valid work permit. In the Netherlands, employers must request this document from the immigration office while in other European countries permits are issues directly to the student. These permits can only be requested after a job is obtained and often take four to six weeks to be issued. These bureaucratic hurdles make hiring a non-EU international student a daunting prospecting for many employees, especially since those students can only work 10 hours per week.

Germany and Belgium both offer free transportation to its non-EU international students if enrolled as full time student. However, there is no such accommodation made for non-EU international students in Netherlands.  

International students come to TU Delft because of its reputation as a world-class university. Unfortunately, limited work opportunities can lead to financial and emotional stress which is detrimental to a student’s educational endeavours. The university administration needs to acknowledge and address this issue. The administration needs to do more to facilitate relationships between employers and non-EU international students.

Sadly, if this current trend continues, TU Delft and the Netherlands might no longer be able to attract talented international students. While the university works hard in many areas to make non-EU international students comfortable during their arrival and the duration of their stay, they also need to consider what can be done to ease the work pressure on those students.



Dhariyash Rathod

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