National Student Survey: bachelor Philosophy scores best

If the new National Student Survey (Nationale Studenten Enquête) is to be believed, EUR students are quite positive about their degree programmes. In terms of overall satisfaction, all programmes have earned a generous pass mark. Which isn’t a particularly distinctive achievement, since university students have been very enthusiastic about their programmes for years.

The respondents are more critical about aspects like ‘career preparation’, ‘internationalisation’ and ‘internship’ – although most degree programmes score high enough for a pass mark here too. Two negative outliers in the ranking are the 1.2 (on a scale of 5) awarded to EUR’s Law programme for ‘internship’, and the 2.3 earned by Criminology for ‘career preparation’.

The double bachelor degree in Philosophy gets the highest score in bachelor studies. Among the masters, Employment Law and the Philosophy research master stood out above the rest.

Reliable or not?

The results of the National Student Survey were presented on Wednesday – four months later than usual. This year’s edition does not include feedback from students at most universities of applied sciences. In late March, these institutions withdrew from the survey, stating that they believed the data had become unreliable after the introduction of the new privacy act. In the past, the pre-completed data of some 200,000-300,000 respondents could be used to determine the students’ identity, as well as which programme they were enrolled in. The 2019 survey marked the first time students had to provide this information themselves – leading to a number of errors.According to Statistics Netherlands various adjustments have ensured the 2019 poll is once again just as reliable as previous editions.

Studiekeuze123 spokesperson Pauline Thoolen thinks it’s a pity the universities of applied sciences ultimately decided to no longer contribute to this recalibration, although she understands where they’re coming from. “We made a lot of demands on the institutions when it came to yet supplying the requested data. They had to put in a lot of time and effort.”

Compulsory

Education Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven has submitted a bill to the House of Representatives that would make cooperation with the survey compulsory for research universities and universities of applied sciences. Talks regarding adaptations to the 2020 questionnaire are currently in a deadlock, and Van Engelshoven is worried that support for the poll is slowly eroding – calling its very continuation into question.