{"id":178377,"date":"2025-04-24T13:23:05","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T11:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=178377"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:27:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:27:47","slug":"psychologists-disappointed-i-had-hoped-for-a-bit-more-harvard-a-bit-less-columbia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2025\/04\/24\/psychologists-disappointed-i-had-hoped-for-a-bit-more-harvard-a-bit-less-columbia\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychologists disappointed: ‘I had hoped for a bit more Harvard, a bit less Columbia’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news that the International Bachelor of Psychology is to be abolished has hit staff of the programme hard. Tuesday last week, they were told the news by Executive Board president Annelien Bredenoord during a meeting in the department. “You do feel a bit like you’re thrown under the bus”, says programme director Marjan Gorgievski.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFemke Legu\u00e9<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

The news wasn\u2019t entirely unexpected, Gorgievski tells over the phone. \u201cPieter Omtzigt (an MP who spoke out a lot about internationalisation, ed.) seizes nearly every opportunity to mention psychology as an example of a programme that shouldn\u2019t need to be offered in English. And when you look at the statistics, which show that a quarter of international psychology students remain in the Netherlands after their studies, while that figure is 40 percent for some technical programmes, it doesn\u2019t even seem that unreasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speechless<\/h2>

Still, Gorgievski was \u2018speechless\u2019 on Tuesday after Executive Board president Annelien Bredenoord announced that the programme would revert to Dutch as of 2027, as part of a package that universities are offering to the minister, so they can keep control over which international programmes are removed. \u201cYou\u2019re being offered like this, as if you\u2019re being thrown under the bus\u201d, Gorgievski says. \u201cWe had, of course, been preparing plans to comply with the language assessment for some time. But according to the executive board chair, no plan would be good enough to convince the politicians. An offer without psychology would not be feasible.\u201d<\/p>\n\t

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In anticipation of a review of all non-Dutch language programmes by minister of Education Eppo Bruins to potentially abolish them, universities have made their own proposal to turn certain programmes to Dutch or reduce the number of students. The condition for this proposal is that the review is to be cancelled. The Executive Board expects that many more programmes would be eliminated if this review were to happen. The minister announced on Wednesday that he doesn’t intend to scrap the review.<\/p>\n

The international bachelor’s programme in Psychology is the only EUR programme that will completely discontinue in the proposal, starting in 2027. There will still be a Dutch bachelor’s programme in Psychology, and the intake restriction (600 first-year students) is likely to remain the same as it is now for both English and Dutch combined. In that way, there will be more places available for Dutch students.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t

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\n\t\t\u2018You think: that politician simply doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about\u2019\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t–<\/span>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthias Wieser\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

Professor of Clinical psychology Matthias Wieser was not surprised either, but still found it a \u2018shock\u2019 to hear the news, he shares via Teams from Tilburg, where he is temporarily escaping university troubles at a music festival. \u201cEspecially because you don\u2019t really understand why this needs to happen. Then you hear Omtzigt continually saying that therapy cannot be conducted in English, and you think: that politician simply doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about, because psychologists work in so many more places than just therapy. And now we\u2019re giving in to this populist nonsense!\u201d<\/p>\n

Too early<\/h2>

More on the Internationalisation in balance act<\/h2>