Turkmens account for half of all foreign university students in Belarus
Students from Turkmenistan. Photo: old.gsu.by
The National Statistics Committee (BelStat) has released data about the number of foreign students enrolled in Belarusian universities. Foreign students totalled 15 506 people in 2018 and accounted for 5.8% of all students in the country.
The number of foreign students has grown by more than 6000 people over the past eight years. In the 2010/11 academic year - the baseline for the statistics, there were 9357 foreign students or 2.1% of the total number of university students in the country.
Turkmenistan is the leader with 7749 (against 3408 in 2010/2011) people having arrived in Belarus to obtain higher education. This is 50% of all non-Belarus students in Belarusian universities. One in two foreign students in Belarus is a Turkmen.
Students from Russia are in the second place - 1 389 people. Their number has dropped from 2197 in 2010/11. Chinese are in the third place with 1113 students against 1227 in the 2010/11 academic year. The least number of foreign students are from Lithuania (83), Uzbekistan (112) and Iraq (179).
