EUR-wide honours programme cancelled from 2027

The Honours Academy is closing doors from 2027. This and next academic year will be the last opportunities for students to join the EUR-wide honours programmes. The decision to close the academy is based on the new university strategy, which reallocates the funding across the university, leaving the Honours Academy empty-handed.

The Honours Academy consists of a bachelor honours programme and two master programmes – one in English and one in Dutch. These programmes focus on providing transdisciplinary hands-on experience to highly motivated students. A place where they can innovate and engage with complex societal issues – from climate change to socio-economic inequality. In the programmes, selected students meet each week, gather experiences and insights to help them find solutions to a given problem.

With its different approach and opportunity, the Honours Academy is well appreciated by its participants.

“The whole process was very fun and rewarding, and I would highly recommend the programme, especially because it brings together students from very different disciplines at EUR. We learned so much from each other,” said Sonja Stojiljković who was part of the Erasmus honours programme Grand Challenges in 2023.

Budget cuts

This extracurricular education, however, will be stopped after the next academic year. Due to budget cuts, the strategic funding will have to be reallocated across the university, leaving no funding for the Honours Academy.

“Last summer, the Executive Board decided to phase out the Erasmus Honours Academy and to discontinue the EUR-wide honours programmes after the academic year 2026–2027. These recent developments reflect longer-term strategic and financial prioritisation, not a lack of appreciation for what these programmes have offered”, a press officer of the university stated in an e-mail.

The Erasmus University is not alone in this. Other universities are cutting their honours programmes as well. Robin van den Akker, the head of the Honours Academy, explains the reason for this further:

“I think it is partly because of the success of the honours programmes. These programs are labs in which you can innovate educational setups or pedagogies. Due to their success, a lot of these innovations have been implemented in the regular curriculum. Another reason for the cancellation is that the label ‘honours’ can sound quite exclusive. And a third reason: with smaller budgets for universities, the focus is to maintain your core programmes.”

New opportunities

Are these academic extracurricular opportunities for students gone forever? The Honours Academy is currently looking for new opportunities for extracurricular programmes to be developed. If those are to be, they must be created within the context of the new university strategy with a focus on engagement and impact.

“I strongly believe in the value of these extracurricular, transdisciplinary programs. This is why my mission now is to try to establish new ones in line with the new strategy”, said Van den Akker.

Erasmus University is on a similar page, according to the spokesperson. “Although the ‘honours’ label itself is not decisive for us, EUR does see value in interdisciplinary and interfaculty educational initiatives. We are currently exploring how such forms of education could be developed within the framework of the new strategy.”

Honours programmes per school

There are also honours programmes per faculty. Those were supported by strategic funding from the university – with the promise that it would stop at the end of the strategic programme. This ended two years ago already, which means that for the past couple of years it was up to the schools to organise and fund their own honours programmes. The decision over the future of these programmes is completely up to the schools. While some have already introduced changes (like the ESHCC which is going to combine its honours programmes into one for the whole school), the future remains unclear for others.