Dutch university professors’ English is not always up to par

According to Keuzegids Universiteiten 2018, the comparative university catalogue in the Netherlands, students studying at Dutch universities are not satisfied with their professors’ command of the English language.

University Catalogue

The Keuzegids Universiteiten 2018 compares all of the bachelor degree programmes in the Netherlands and ranks them accordingly. This year, 66 bachelor degrees received the annual title of “excellent degree programme”; this means that the programme managed to score more than 75 points on a scale of 20 to 100 points.

When ranking degree programmes, areas such as facilities, supervision, assessment, educational feasibility and the degree programme itself were focused upon, amongst other factors.

Dunglish in the university classroom

According to research from the Keuzegids, the teachers at the technical universities of Enschede and Eindhoven could do with taking an English course as they had the worst English skills, each scoring a meagre 6,3. The University of Groningen and Maastricht University performed much better with scores of 7,2 and 7,4 respectively.

Growth and falling university scores

The deterioration in scores can be attributed to the growth experienced by certain universities.

The Dutch universities that saw the greatest decline in their scores are Leiden, Eindhoven and Rotterdam. Coincidentally, the population of students at these universities has grown by at least 30 percent in the last six years. As such, university facilities and supervision have not been able to keep up with the new student numbers.

The best university in the Netherlands

This year, Wageningen University has yet again been crowned the best university in the Netherlands. Despite 50 percent more first-year students every 10 years, the university shows no signs of a struggle to keep up. Wageningen University has the highest rate of study success and the most satisfied students, according to the catalogue.

The Open University and the University of Twente follow Wageningen University in the ranking, and the University of Groningen, Radboud University Nijmegen and Utrecht University form the top three classic universities.