Research by the Central Bank reveals that 73% of foreign students at Dominican universities come from Haiti, as reported in Listin Diario. Central Bank researchers contacted 24 local universities. Haitians are privileged among foreigners in that they are allowed to pay the same tuition rates as Dominican nationals.
The findings include the statistic that almost half of the Haitian students are studying medicine, or a total of 8,859. The number of Haitians studying medicine here, nevertheless, has declined compared to the previous research in 2009. More are now opting for business and engineering degrees. In 2009, 55.5% of Haitian students in the DR were studying medicine. Overall, the number of Haitian university students has increased by 4.4% since the 2010 earthquake. In 2009, Haitians made up 69% of all foreigners studying here.
US students make up the second largest group, with 20.1%, but there has been a 3.4% decline in their numbers. Europeans make up 1.5%, South Americans (not including Colombia and Venezuela) 1.3%, students from Central America and the Caribbean 0.9%, Colombia 0.7%, Asia 0.6%, Venezuela 0.5%, Middle East 0.3% and Mexico 0.1%.
The percentages of foreign students by degree include: medicine (47.1%), business (9.7%), engineering (10.2%), dentistry (4.5%), computer sciences (4.3%), industrial engineering (2.9%), economics (3.9%), languages (3.4%) and law (1.9%).