HorriblePerson

I agree with the comic. I do however disagree with the title. I think the Hamas' attack shouldn't to be called "resistance", just as Israel's response shouldn't be called "self defense".

I pretty much agree with you on that. I would only add that some priority aught to be given to local students (as in both in-city and regional out-of-city students). Otherwise you could end up with the situation where, if there are still a lot more applications from international students compared to local students, they could force out local students who cannot afford to go study somewhere else.

One issue with changing the current system is that unrestricted admissions of out-of-city students isn't just a norm in western European countries. I'm pretty sure there is an EU law that you are not allowed to discriminate between domestic and international students and changing that would undoubtedly cause political issues. I hope they do change that it in the future, but that is more of a medium term solution.

Therefore, I still think this is probably the best short term solution.

IMHO I don't think removing the incentives on the side of the university would be enough to decrease the number of international students in the short term. Even without advertising by the universities, the Netherlands is a popular choice precisely because you can do almost every degree in English without having to learn another language. Combine this with fairly high-ranking universities, high quality quality of life, almost everyone outside of uni speaking English and I don't think removing incentives would have much of an effect.

I think this is probably the best solution in the short term, especially for Dutch students.