The Maastricht faculties of Psychology and Neurosciences and the School of Business and Economics have done well in the latest ‘excellence ranking’ by the German Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung (CHE).

Students who visit the study advisor to talk about personal problems, want the report of their talk to remain confidential and inaccessible for others. That was the case, until now. But since the implementation of the new automation system MUSL, such data can now also be accessed - and even changed - from other faculties.

Three gold, six silver and three bronze. These are part of Maastricht’s harvest from the latest survey by Elsevier, which is out on the newsstands today. In total, the quality of 12 bachelor’s programmes at Maastricht University was assessed by students. The results show Rotterdam to be a big competitor.

One wonders how students will look back on the MUSL problems in upcoming surveys, when last year alone one out of four students was dissatisfied with timetables, group compositions and the announcement of study and test results. These are some of the results of the Student Satisfaction Survey recently carried out by Flycatcher.

There are virtually no problems concerning the timetable for the second block period, says the new Chief Information Officer René Kocken. As of this week he is also responsible for MUSL, the new student information and registration system.

“We didn’t always make the right decisions”, said a member of the Executive Board, André Postema, last week in a meeting with the University Council. Even before the official evaluation of MUSL, the board is already doing penance.

The prestigious campus that was to be built in Randwijck, is hanging by a thread. The complex, of which the foundations have already been laid but where all construction activities have been suspended since May, appears to be a millstone around housing corporation Servatius’s neck. The idea was to create accommodation for 400 to 500 students, as well as offices and a large multi-purpose sports hall. Costs rocketed and the supervisory board stepped down prematurely. The Minister for Housing will now appoint an external supervisor.

Pierogi and golabki. If you are from Poland, you know immediately what we are talking about; for others it could probably mean anything. The menu in Grand Café Monastero on the Kommel included these two typically Polish dishes last Friday. All Polish students at Maastricht University were invited for dinner. About fifty of them came. The organisers, the Poland target country team, also joined in.

Since the beginning of this year, Maastricht University has 91 completely furnished rooms available for non-European master's students. The majority of these rooms are located in a recently completed building on the Reinier Nafzgerstraat, at the foot of the Kennedy Bridge. Almost all rooms – even the last ones that are still awaiting delivery – have been rented.

Maastricht University has presented four scholarships to students of two Chinese universities, both located in the area of Sichuan that was struck by an earthquake in 2008. This is the first year in which scholarships specially for Chinese students have been awarded.

In May, the law faculty's student association Ouranos organised a debate about the limits of free speech and the role that the PVV leader Geert Wilders had in that. The poster that was used by Ouranos to announce the event was found to be offensive by a young Muslim student. The poster showed the well-known Danish cartoon of a bearded Muslim head with a turban which transforms into a bomb with a lit fuse. Written across there is a verse from the Koran, in Arabic. The student wrote a letter, published it in Observant and was subsequently verbally abused by many through the Geenstijl.nl website. “But I’m not an extremist.”