1953 new students have enrolled to study at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) this year and this number increased by 3 percent since 2015. 1546 of the new students will be state funded and 407 will study at self-funded places. The major increase is in the share of state-funded students, which means that more talented young people chose KTU.
The most popular study programme in Lithuania is KTU’s Software Systems; almost 400 new students will start studying it this September.
The student enrolment in Lithuania in the last two years is steadily decreasing: according to the information from the Lithuanian Association for General Admissions (LAMA BPO), around 23.5 thousand students have enrolled to study at Lithuanian universities and colleges this year. This number dropped by 2.5 thousand since the last year and by 3.5 thousand since 2014.
KTU and its partner ISM University of Management and Economics are the only two major universities in Lithuania with growing student numbers. The student enrolment increased by 3 percent at KTU, and by 6 percent at ISM since the last year. Also, KTU accepted almost 7 percent more students to study at state-funded places than in 2015.
Jurgita Šiugždinienė, KTU’s Vice-Rector for Studies agrees that the competition for students-to-be in Lithuania is fierce. However, the best strategy, according to her, is not to compete locally by trying to keep all study programmes and by attracting students from the competitors, but to aim for the brightest and the most talented by keeping up high entry requirements and improving the quality of studies.
“We are in global market, therefore our main competitors are not only Lithuanian, but the universities from all over the world. This year we raised the entry and English language requirements for students from abroad, master students have to pass the motivational interviews. Temporarily this may decrease the number of international students, but in the long run this strategy will pay off”, says Šiugždinienė.
She says that she is happy to hear comments from students and their parents about how difficult it is to study at KTU: “I agree, it is not easy to study here, but that only proves the high quality of our studies”.
The new academic year at KTU will start on 1 September 2016 with an exceptional celebration at Kaunas Žalgiris Arena.
