Enrollment in post-secondary and tertiary education has increased by 9%, according to new data released by the National Statistics Office (NSO) on Wednesday. 

Students enrolled in post-secondary 10,114, in 2023, up from 9,610 in 2022, or an increase of 5.2%

Malte students outnumbered female students enrolled in sixth forms last year, with 1.4 percentage points more male students enrolled. 

The vast majority (87.2%) of post-secondary students were under the age of 19 years, while foreign students accounted for some 14.6% of the whole cohort. 

Most post-secondary students in Malta (84.5%) enrolled in a state-run school, while just over half (54.2%) were enrolled in vocational studies. 

When it comes to tertiary education, student enrollment was up by 11% when compared to the year prior, for a total of 21,120 students. 

The NSO noted that their was also an increase in institutions offering tertiary education courses last year. 

More than half (58.2%) of all students enrolled in tertiary education were female. 

Most tertiary-level students chose to enrol in a full-time course (69%) while part-time students saw an increase of 7.7% in enrollment. 

There were 6,497 foreign students enrolled in tertiary education last year, or some 30.8% of all enrolled students. 

Of these, 15.5% were EU nationals while 15.3% were students from EU member states. 

The largest proportion of tertiary students were enrolled in a bachelor's degree (51.8%) followed by Master's degree students (32.9%). 

Female students outnumbered their male counterparts at almost all tertiary levels, except in ISCED level 8, meaning a doctorate degree or equivalent.

At the tertiary level, the most popular field of study was business, administration and law with 28.5% of students enrolled in these courses. 

This was followed by the health and welfare field with 22.1% of the total.

The least popular field of study at tertiary level was agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary, with only 0.4% of students taking up these fields. 

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.