International Psychology programme must halve intake

The university will reduce the intake for the international bachelor’s programme in Psychology from two hundred to one hundred students. This was communicated by the Executive Board to the faculty under which the programme falls. On Thursday, staff will receive further explanation during a closed staff meeting.

The Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB) is not the only faculty where the intake of international students must be reduced. The Erasmus School of Economics and the Rotterdam School of Management will also be allowed to admit fewer international students in the 2027-2028 academic year. In total, this concerns a reduction of more than two hundred students. All other faculties must keep intake at the same level. For now, the measure only applies to that academic year; what will happen to the maximum intake after that isn’t known yet known.

Self-regulation

The measures are the result of the ‘self-regulation’ agreed upon by universities last year, when the previous cabinet threatened to introduce a ‘foreign-language education assessment’, under which English-taught programmes would have had to prove their right to exist. Self-regulation was intended to prevent such an externally imposed assessment.

When it became clear that the English-language track of Psychology might have to make a ‘sacrifice’, the programme had already anticipated this by reducing the intake of international students by one hundred, programme director Marjan Gorgievski explains.

Now the programme must reduce the intake by another hundred students. “You do start to think: perhaps we should not have gone along with it after all, then maybe we would only have lost one hundred places in total”, says Gorgievski. She would have preferred to see the burden shared across a larger number of programmes.

Faculty staff were informed of the news on Tuesday. Gorgievski criticises the Executive Board’s decision-making process. “Neither the University Council nor the ESSB management team were consulted in this.” ESSB staff will receive an explanation of the decision on Thursday. The matter will also still be discussed in the University Council next Tuesday.