Every year, the editors of Keuzegids list what they think are the best bachelor’s programmes in the Netherlands. They base themselves on the assessments of students who completed the National Student Survey (NSE) in spring of this year. They gave grades for aspects such as the content of the programme, their lecturers, testing, the atmosphere and the way in which they are prepared for their careers.
Top programme
Any course that scores 75 points (out of a maximum of one hundred) may call itself a ‘top programme’. UM has four: the University Colleges in Maastricht and Venlo, Medicine and Global Studies. Last year, six UM bachelor’s received that honour. The year before that, it was seven. That was when the Science Programme dropped out of the list, but with 7.4, it is still the best in its category. This year, Circular Engineering and Econometrics dropped from the list of absolute toppers, even though they are also the numbers one in their respective categories.
Last on the list
Last on the list at UM is the bachelor’s of Dutch Law, which scores a 3.2. The students complain about everything: the atmosphere, testing, the content, chances of getting a diploma in four years and also the lecturers. Last year, things weren’t much better, when the programme received a 3.7. European Law School – with 5.0 – is also in the lower region of the UM programmes that were assessed. Here too, there were complaints about the atmosphere, testing, and the lecturers. The European Law School, on the other hand, is on the rise again compared to the previous Keuzegids (4.6 then).
According to vice dean of Education Sjoerd Claessens, the Law faculty “pays no attention to filling in the NSE,” which could explain the negative score. With such an open survey, chances are great that mainly critics take the effort to fill out the survey.
Whether the rigorous curriculum changes at the bachelor’s of Dutch Law in September 2020 also play a part, Claessens doesn’t know. “Neither the NSE, nor the Keuzegids provides any evidence for this. That is the disadvantage of quantitative data. There are scores, but why the scores are that way, you don’t know.” In faculty council meetings last year, student members occasionally complained about the new programme. They missed a number of “intensive” legal skills, they said, more practice with disputes and arguing cases, like in the ‘old’ Oefenrechtbank, but also negotiating and writing a memorandum of oral pleading.
Claessens also mentions “the relativeness of rankings”; in the THE ranking, the faculty is in the top 20 of the world’s best. But of course, it is not the students who have a say there. The aspects that matter there include research, citation and internationalisation.
Internationalisation
The internationalisation of higher education was an important theme during the latest election campaign. Keuzegids 2024 lists a number of facts: in the top ten programmes with the most foreign students, Maastricht is represented five times: International Business, the University Colleges in Venlo and Maastricht, European Law School, and Psychology. In the top ten of bachelor’s programmes with the highest percentage of foreign students, the picture is more or less the same; five UM programmes: Business Analytics and European Law School (sharing second place, both with 88 per cent), Digital Society, Business Engineering and in tenth place Global Studies (81 per cent).
Obviously, English is the official language in these programmes and just like in previous years, Maastricht students feel that their lecturers do very well in this field. They give the highest score in the country for the staff’s English-speaking skills: 4.3 on a five-point scale. Number two is UvA in Amsterdam (4.0), lecturers at Radboud Universiteit score lowest in the eyes of their students (3.7).
The number of bachelor’s in English in the next academic year will be at almost 50 per cent on a national level, according to Keuzegids. Moreover, foreign students will take up one third of the places in programmes with intake restrictions. Most of the bachelor’s programmes at UM are in English. Exceptions are Medicine and Psychology (in two languages), Law, Tax Law and Health Sciences.
Wendy Degens and Riki Janssen