Explanation tuition fees

Dutch universities receive a government subsidy only for students who satisfy the nationality criterium and have not already obtained a bachelor’s or master’s degree from a Dutch higher education institution. Such students are referred to as ‘subsidised students’. They are eligible for the statutory tuition fee.

Find out if you need to pay the statutory tuition fee or the institutional tuition fee

If you do not meet the nationality criterion, or if you have already obtained a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Dutch higher education, the university does not receive a government contribution to subsidise the costs of your education. You will therefore be required to cover the costs yourself and pay the higher, institutional tuition fee.

UM determines the institutional tuition fee rate for bachelor’s and master’s programmes per academic year. These institutional tuition fee rates are based on the government’s funding per subsidised student per type of study programme*, supplemented by the amount of the full statutory tuition fee. For reasons of efficiency, the government has divided the types of study programmes into 3 funding levels (low, high and top). Therefor UM has three different institutional tuition fees: low, high and top:

Your tuition fees cover an entire academic year, i.e. from September up until August. If you start your study programme during the academic year in February, you pay for the current academic year 7/12 of the statutory or institutional fee. Before the start of the new academic year in September you re-register for the programme you began in February, because all programmes at UM run for at least one year. So if you start your master's in Febuary it will run at least up and until January the next year. This means you will have payments due at two different times: once in February, when you begin your programme, and once in September, when the new academic year begins. Note that when you re-register for the new academic year, you will then have to pay for the entire academic year, even if you expect to graduate during this year. Once you have graduated, the UM will reimburse you the tuition fee over the months of the academic year as of your deregistration.

_{Please note: The amount of the tuition fees are determined yearly before the start of the new academic year and may differ from the previous academic year, because of the annual indexation of the statutory tuition rate by the government and the amended determination of the institutional fees by the UM based on the government modified funding rules.}