The new University Selection Guide has shown that students aren’t always impressed with the language abilities of their docents. In fact, the Universities of Enschede (Overijssel) and Eindhoven (Brabant) score no more than a meager 6,3 for English – making it “barely average” if that.
According to the guide teachers of technical universities especially seem to have, “in many cases quite a bit more of a mathematical talent than a linguistic”. Thankfully it’s not all bad news – universities such as Maastricht (Limburg) and Groningen (Groningen) seem to do significantly better with a 7,4 and a 7,2 – well within desirable margins.
Wageningen University comes out as the best university in the nation, according to the guide, with its talent to manage growing student numbers without dropping in quality. Universities in Leiden, Eindhoven and Rotterdam however are receiving some serious criticism for seemingly focusing on quantity over quality. All of them have grown their numbers by at least 30% over a six-year time span, growing pains inevitable.
Louis van Gaal speaks the best Dunglish:
International Ranking – Quite a Different List.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities 2017 (ARWU)-list shows quite a different pattern however. According to this global institute there are at least four Dutch universities in the World Top 100 – the Universities of Utrecht, Groningen, Erasmus (Rotterdam) and Leiden all rank within the 100 closely followed by Radboud (Nijmegen), UvA & VU (both Amsterdam) and Wageningen within the top 101-150.
Regardless, the Netherlands is a pretty great country to study and most institutions are very open to foreign students, but it never hurts to look into the many guides and maybe practice your “Dunglish” – the cringeworthy Dutch-English hybrid many Dutch tend to throw around at unsuspecting foreigners…