Jan Nedermeijer
From the Website VSNU (: Association of Universities in the Netherlands).
Universities want students to complete their degree programmes successfully within the allocated time frames. That means that they are committed to ensuring students end up in the right degree programmes and do not fail or fall too far behind in their studies.
Themes:
- How do we measure study success rates?
- More students are obtaining their Bachelor’s degree within four years.
- A Study Check for every student.
- Not all students land in the right place on the first try
How do we measure study success rates?
There are all kinds of definitions for ‘study success’. The one we use here measures study success based on time to complete a degree programme, programme switching, drop-out rates, students having experiences abroad, and the extent to which education is viewed as sufficiently challenging. Students’ workloads and the support they receive during their studies are something of an indication of the preconditions for study success. We see these as important indicators of study success, but they do not tell the whole story. Universities do not only want their students to graduate quickly, they also want to offer a rich learning experience: they actively encourage study and student associations, studying abroad, engaging in sporting and cultural activities, etc. During their studies, students should develop themselves in a wide variety of areas. At the same time, we do not want such activities to lead to excessive study delays, so we try to give students the space to have these sorts of experiences as part of their degree programme.