Organisation - October 25, 2012

VHL so-so in study guide

The quality of VHL hovers below the average, according to the selection guide for applied sciences universities in 2013 released last Tuesday.

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With a score of 58 points, VHL finds itself in a mediocre position in the semi-big institutions category. This score has hardly changed in the last few years (59 points in 2011). VHL is more than five points below the average score of 63.5 for the semi-big institutions but is still ahead of six other applied sciences universities. 'Green' applied sciences university HAS Den Bosch has jacked up its score in the last two years and now has 70 points. VHL programmes often lose out to their counterparts in HAS. However, VHL also has winners, such as Food & Innovation Management in Wageningen (76 points) and Business Administration & Agrobusiness in Wageningen and Velp (72 points).
The selection guide ranks institutions based on the results of the National Student Survey (NSS), data from accredited organization NVAO and objective figures such as pass rates. In general, small applied sciences universities have the highest scores. Very few semi-big and, in particular, big institutions are able to score high across the board. In the already published Elsevier ranking, student opinion for VHL has fallen dramatically compared to previous years. VHL ended up 25 th out of 26 institutions. It is worth mentioning that this evaluation is based on the NSS data also used by the selection guide. This goes to show that each methodology churns out slightly different lists.