Imaging Engineering (MIE) is a two-year, English-language Master’s programme at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, which is now in its third year. Although the programme managed to attract seven students in September 2023, the new cohort consists of only two: one from Iran and one from America. Programme director Gavin Hazell: “Initially, we were expecting six students, but because of various visa issues, four dropped out.”
Can it still be called problem-based learning if it’s such a small group? Normally, that involves discussions between ten to fifteen students. “We did try it, with the help of a tutor, but it often felt forced,” said 28-year-old American student, Chance Everett Charles. Hazell recognised the struggle: “PBL is rather a challenge and requires flexibility from our course coordinators, sometimes they have to change the way a process is implemented. You can’t stick rigidly to the standard method, sometimes you are forced to choose a more practical approach, such as a computer assignment to analyse an image.”
The sessions are also shorter, sometimes more informal, such as meeting in the tutor’s office. The students are given questions about the assigned reading, then discuss them, either with each other or with the teacher, or are expected to write a paper. As the two students are taking different elective courses (only for MIE students) in this and the next period, they also have to work ‘solo’ a lot. For example, where one is taking Advanced Image Processing & AI, the other has chosen Advanced Optical Microscopy. It would not have been strange, if the programme board had said that there would be no elective options this year due to the lack of students, but Charles is glad that didn’t happen. “That’s what they used to recruit students, it’s something you look forward to as a prospective student, so it’s nice that they said: ‘We think it’s fair to offer them to you’.”
Challenges
The degree is aimed at producing interdisciplinary specialists who are both able to work with the technical side of imaging, and have the necessary scientific knowledge. An example of a modern imaging system is mass spectrometry, a technique that allows for the imaging of molecules. This is a key area of the Maastricht research institute M4I, run by distinguished university professor Ron Heeren, so he is involved with the degree programme. And yet, MIE is by no means focused solely on the biomedical field. For example, the students were tasked with designing a platform holding a camera that scans art works in the Bonnefanten Museum.
But what do the students themselves think of the small-scale programme? Charles is an electro-technician, who spent a number of years working for the American army as a specialist in unmanned aerial systems, such as drones. He came across UM during a trip around the world after leaving the army. He was not familiar with problem-based learning, so the fact that he is missing out on it now, is no skin off his nose. Nor is the fact that he has only one fellow student, “I prefer to study by myself”.
Not so, the 28-year-old Iranian student Niyousha Mirzaghavam. Once in Maastricht – she really wanted to study in Europe – she was shocked to discover there were only two students, including herself. Very different to her time at the Islamic Azad University in Teheran, where she had been one of five hundred students taking the Bachelor’s in Biomedical Engineering. She said MIE is a tough degree, content-wise, but especially because of the English terminology. Her mother tongue is Farsi and her Bachelor’s degree was also in that language. Mirzaghavam has experienced “the necessary challenges”, something that might have been easier if there had been more students around her, she said, people she could have become friends with, had discussions with, could have learned from. Now, she is mostly reliant on herself.
19 thousand euros
Regardless of the lack of ‘international classroom’ – it’s more like private tutoring – the question arises as to how viable such a degree programme even is. FSE currently has five Master’s programmes and this is the only one that has “fewer than ten students”, explained director Bakir Bulić. Because the other Master’s programmes have “excellent student numbers”, MIE can “easily piggy-back off the support we offer the larger programmes, such as applications and scheduling. That helps spread the fixed costs. It need not be said that while it isn’t a super lucrative programme in a financial sense, it also isn’t a financial ‘bleeder’ that damages the faculty.” Dean Thomas Cleij referenced other Master’s programmes such as Biobased Materials and System Biology, which also had very few students in their first years. “That intake is now much improved, so you just need to be patient.” He also pointed out that the engineering side of the faculty is slowly growing. “We still have very few alumni, our Bachelor’s programmes in engineering are still fairly new.” Finally, the anti-internationalisation plans of the government haven’t helped either, said the dean. Universities chose to make their own decisions and in 2024, jointly agreed not to recruit internationally any more. (Although, UM has recently chosen to ignore that decision by recruiting in the Euregion.)
For students outside the European Union, such as Charles and Mirzaghavam, this degree costs over 19 thousand euros (institutional tuition fees). As a former soldier, Charles is taking advantage of a scheme by the US military, ‘compensation’ to help veterans work on a civilian career. This scheme also covers studying abroad. Mirzaghavam saved up the money needed, aided financially by her parents.