Dutch institutions to provide thousands of scholarships for international tech students

Although the amount of Dutch students enrolled in technical studies is stable, around 30,000 technical positions go unfilled each year due to a lack of qualified workers. A new ‘technology pact’, signed recently by Dutch businesses, educational institutions, unions, and governmental bodies, hopes to solve this issue by attempting to attract more international tech students.

The pact proposes an increase of internships and scholarships for talented foreign tech students, as well as a strong recruiting link with universities.

Currently, only 7% of international students are enrolled in a technical study, with only 27% of those remaining in The Netherlands to work upon completing their programme. To solve this issue that is sure to cause more and more tension in the coming years if left unattended, industry in the field wants to see the development of more traineeships and apprenticeships for international students, while companies in the sector have promised to provide thousands of scholarships for exceptional Dutch and international science and technology students.

The universities, contributing some recently published advice from the Social and Economic Council on how to keep foreign talent in The Netherlands to the pact, will participate in this joint effort to attract more national and international students to technical studies. Acknowledging the importance of primary and secondary education in igniting an interest in technology in students, the pact also suggests an increase of investment in technology programmes at the lower levels of education.

Nuffic director, Freddy Weima, believes this technology pact will be a good step in the right direction and plans to help the various organisations achieve the goals and agreements the pact has set out. Nuffic is an independent, non-profit organisation in The Netherlands that is dedicated to international cooperation in higher education.

See programmes of universities offering technical studies.

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Dutch education system climbs up in the Universitas 21 rankings 2013

Universitas 21, a worldwide consortium of leading research universities, has issued the rankings of countries, which offer higher education for international students. Second year in a row these rankings evaluated various criteria of national education systems as well as their progress and global impact.

Compared to last year result, in 2013 the Netherlands improved its overall position by 2 places and was ranked 7th with 78.2 points, ahead of United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and France. United States and Sweden retained their first and second positions while Canada moved down by 1 place and let Switzerland to the 3rd place.

During this research Universitas 21 assessed education systems of 50 countries by 22 attributes, which were grouped into four main categories: resources (25%), environment (20%), connectivity (15%), and output (40%). First place in each category scored 100 points and the results of other countries were calculated as a fraction of the first place result.

Expenses of the government, private companies, and tertiary institutions spent on higher education define the resources category, which is calculated as an amount of funds per student. Among all categories this one has the highest impact on the output of higher education in a country. Here the Netherlands remained on the 9th place with 82.8 points, higher than France, Germany, and UK, while first three places belonged to Denmark (100), Canada (96.9), and Sweden (96.3).

In the environment category the Netherlands repeated last year success and became the top country in the ranking list. This category identifies how favourable policy and regulations are in a country and how efficiently national education draws assigned funds. Gender balance of students and staff is also taken into balance. The results are very compact here, containing 17 countries in a range from 90 to 100 points with New Zealand and United States on the 2nd and 3rd places.

Compared to 2012 value of the connectivity category in overall rankings was increased by 5% at the cost of even reduce of the environment’s value to include assessing of internet usage. Most important parameters here are still the number of overseas students and frequency of research publications, written in cooperation with international authors.

In the connectivity category Holland improved the result by 24 points since 2012 and was ranked 8th with 76.6 points, just after UK and ahead of US and most of European countries. Switzerland (100), Australia (96.7) and Singapore (94.4) became the first three leaders in this ranking.

Output category embodies such variables as quality and impact of academic research, presence of international universities, level of proficiency of staff and graduates, and employment rate. In this category the Netherlands concluded the first ten with the same scores (51.9) and position as in the last year ranking. Unquestionable leader here is the US, only two-third of this country’s points received UK(63) and Canada (60).

See the overall ranking list of the first 25 countries.

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Dutch universities score well in Leiden 2013 rankings

Leiden University’s Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) has recently published its ranking of the top 500 universities in the world. These rankings assessed the scientific impact of universities by identifying how often they were cited in articles and reviews during recent years.

The Netherlands was represented by 12 research universities. All of them scored within the first 200 results, while 6 of them made the top 100.

Leiden University was ranked 58th, becoming the best research university in Holland. Compared to the 2012 result, Leiden rose by 42 positions worldwide and 6 positions nationally. This university also became 23rd worldwide in the field of natural sciences and engineering, proving themselves as a national leader in this category.

The top Dutch university in the field of life and earth sciences, Utrecht University, moved from 90th to 64th overall position this year and took 2nd place nationally. Wageningen University and Research Centre was placed 78th worldwide and 3rd in The Netherlands with about the same results as last year’s rankings.

VU University Amsterdam (83rd place), TU Eindhoven (94th), and Erasmus University Rotterdam (96th) were also among the best 100 research universities in world. The best ranking progress was shown by Maastricht University which climbed 83 positions and took 123rd place overall.

For the second year in a row, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was ranked first overall and became the leader of a large group of US universities occupying the top spots in the Leiden rankings.

In 2013, CWTS improved their research methodology and added the statistics of 5 fields of science to their rankings. This feature is meant to help prospective students choose the best university in the area they are most interested in.

The list of these fields and the best Dutch universities in them according to the Leiden rankings are as follows:

Biomedical and health sciences: VU University Amsterdam (64th in the world in this category), University of Twente, Erasmus University Rotterdam.Life and earth sciences: Utrecht University (53rd), Radboud University Nijmegen, VU University Amsterdam.Mathematics and computer science: Erasmus University Rotterdam (75th), University of Twente, Leiden University.Natural sciences and engineering: Leiden University (23rd), Utrecht University, University of Amsterdam.Social sciences and humanities: University of Amsterdam (44th), VU University Amsterdam, Leiden University.

You can find the complete list of overall ranking positions for Dutch universities in the CWTS Leiden Rankings for 2013 and rankings by fields of science on the ‘University Rankings’ page.

Source: www.leidenranking.com

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