{"id":5664,"date":"2015-12-17T10:36:54","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T09:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=44232"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:22:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:22:19","slug":"distinction-between-international-and-dutch-students-must-soon-be-relegated-to-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2015\/12\/17\/distinction-between-international-and-dutch-students-must-soon-be-relegated-to-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Distinction between international and Dutch students must soon be relegated to the past’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internationalisation must become normal. That\u2019s the aim of Ellen Hey, professor of International Public Law at Erasmus School of Law and since last year advisor to the Executive Board on the internationalisation of education. \u201cNow, we often refer to \u2018international\u2019 and \u2018Dutch\u2019 students. Eventually, I hope that we will no longer make that distinction.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ellen Hey<\/span><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

In principle, Hey has been appointed internationalisation advisor until 2018. The biggest challenge of internationalisation is not language, according to Hey. \u201cEveryone here speaks funny English<\/em>. Native speakers sometimes have the most difficulty being understood: they talk so fast and fluently that they are difficult to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cultural diversity is something which tutors and students will have to learn to deal with. \u201cYou sometimes see students laughing at each other in work groups. Someone gives an answer and it comes over strangely to the rest of the group. But I say to them: the same thing happens in the UN negotiating chamber as here in this work group. And you can\u2019t laugh at each other there,\u201d says Hey.<\/p>\n

One of the concrete ways to make internationalisation \u2018normal\u2019 is to join an international network of universities. \u201cThat offers many advantages. For example, you can join forces to submit applications related to education or research and exchange best practices. You can also exchange students on a structural basis. Lots of students are still too apprehensive about going to study abroad. If we can make that easier, I hope that more students will go. You can get a bit more done if you have a number of good partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

International network<\/h3>

It\u2019s not always easy to find such a network. In the Netherlands, Leiden, Amsterdam and Utrecht have joined the prestigious League of European Research Universities (LERU), whose members also include Oxford and Cambridge. EUR is simply too young for the League, and other networks ultimately didn\u2019t offer anything either. \u201cEither we weren\u2019t welcome or the networks didn\u2019t fulfil our wishes\u201d, says Hey.<\/p>\n

The Egg of Columbus: start your own network. \u201cThere are numerous high quality universities with the same problem. The question is: which ones? That\u2019s what we\u2019re now going to find out.\u201d Hey expects that an initial meeting of potential partners will be held in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\t

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