International Students ‘Bring Billions to Germany’-Report.

International students both bring billions of euros into Germany’s fiscal coffers and help stimulate economic growth, according to a study published last week by the German Economic Institute (IW).

The Cologne-based researchers calculated that the 79,000 international students who began studying in Germany in 2022 alone will pay almost €15.5 billion ($16.8 billion) more in taxes and social security contributions during their lives than they will receive in benefits.

Joybrato Mukherjee, president of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which commissioned the study, said in a statement that the findings showed that “international students are an asset to our country in many ways, academically of course, but also economically.”

Germany enjoys a healthy “staying rate” for foreign students: According to an OECD study from 2022, some 45% of people who came to Germany on a student visa in 2010 were still in Germany 10 years later. By then, they had already more than covered the cost of their education, the IW found. It calculated that the cost of educating students is covered by their taxes and social security contributions if 40% of them stay for three years after their studies have finished.

Why students like Germany

There might be plenty of reasons for international students to come to Germany — but one was particular attractive for Younis Ebaid, an Egyptian software developer who moved to the southern German city of Ingolstadt in 2021 to do an English-language master’s program in automative engineering at the Bavarian city’s Technical University of Applied Sciences (THI).

“My first option was English-speaking countries, but it’s very, very expensive,” the 28-year-old told DW. “Germany was the most affordable option.” Most academic institutions in Germany don’t charge tuition fees, even for foreign students. Germany may have established free higher education out of a concern for social justice many decades ago, but it is now functioning as an incentive to attract skilled labour into the country.

“We only pay public semester contributions, which in my university was €60 per semester — that is even cheaper than my university in Egypt,” said Ebaid. Ingolstadt also had other notable attractions — the city of just 140,000 people is the home of Audi, which funds much of the research done at THI. Ebaid said many of his professors had experience working for the auto giant. “Basically the whole town breathes automatives, so it was a very good option,” he added.

Working students

But the cost of living in Bavaria is many times higher than in Egypt, and Ebaid could not live for free — which is why he found part-time work as a software developer in Munich, a job mediated by the university services.

Wido Geis-Thöne, senior economist at IW and co-author of the new report, said this was the main surprise of the study: “International students are already making contributions during their studies, because a large proportion of them get employment.”

The hard part, however, was the transition after graduation. Those university-mediated part-time jobs are only for students — once they’ve graduated, foreign students are at the mercy of the job market: And Germany’s automative industry is currently weathering a rough patch. Both Audi and VW have been laying off workers in recent months.

“When I first came to Germany, the economy was in good shape,” said Ebaid. “But when I finished my master’s in 2024, the decline started. I applied for eight months until I got this full-time job.”

He managed to bridge that gap by working in restaurants and hotels, but now Ebaid is a software development engineer for a global Indian company that makes software for German carmakers. “I got lucky,” he said. “It was one of the few companies that was getting projects.” He mentions former co-students who have been searching for work for more than a year.

DW