Erasmus University receives preliminary positive recommendation on institutional review

The Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders has given Erasmus University a preliminary positive recommendation. The university itself reports this following a visit by a panel for the Institutional Quality Assurance Assessment (ITK) on Wednesday.

The panel doesn’t so much check whether the university is doing well enough, but looks at whether there is sufficient support for the EUR’s vision and ambitions, especially in the field of education. It said on Friday that the university can expect a positive recommendation on all points.

Strong student focus

The members were enthusiastic about the ‘strong student focus’ and the ‘further development towards the concept of an ‘engaged university’, the university writes on intranet MyEUR. It mentions, among other things, Erasmus Verbindt, a project that brings initiatives in the city together with students of Erasmus University. Another positive point the panel mentions is the ‘visible attention for teacher development and student wellbeing’. Finally, the panel also praises the ‘learning culture’ of the organisation, for example visible in knowledge exchange between faculties and with external parties.

The panel also saw areas for improvement. There is ‘room to further specify key concepts so that the organisation can steer more sharply on results and impact’. Strategic themes such as impact and engagement could also be monitored more extensively.

Milestone

Rector magnificus Jantine Schuit calls the recommendation ‘a significant milestone’. “It confirms that, together, we are building a strong culture of quality in which we consciously learn, reflect and improve. At the same time, we see this as an intermediate step: the move towards a more engaged university requires further deepening.”

The findings will be recorded in a provisional advisory report. Erasmus University can comment to that. This response will be taken into account in the final report, which is expected after the summer.

Sample

The Institutional Quality Assurance Assessment (ITK) is an audit carried out every six years. The review panel consists of five independent members, including experts in education and governance and at least one student. They assess how the university works on the quality of its education.

Among other things, they look at the development of strategic plans and how these are worked on in a systematic way. For this, the panel visits a sample of the study programmes; this time these were the bachelor’s programmes Medicine and Public Administration and the master’s programmes Criminology and People, Organisations and Change. There, the panel members not only speak with managers, but also with students and lecturers about their experiences. Staff and students can also speak confidentially with the panel in advance of the visit.

Second consecutive pass

If the university passes the ITK, the individual programmes of Erasmus University will receive a lighter assessment during NVAO accreditation. At the previous ITK in 2018 the university also received a pass straight away. At the very first review in 2012 things went less well: at that time the university was given a year to work on improvements. It succeeded.