Organisation - December 17, 2009

Wageningen Uni best again

The Dutch guide to higher education, the Keuzegids, has declared Wageningen the best university in the Netherlands for the fifth year running. Small is beautiful, say the authors: small universities deliver quality education.

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 For the fifth time in a row, the university is in first place in the ranking in the Keuzegids Universiteiten, which came out today. The ranking is partly based on student evaluations. And the students are positive about Wageningen's small size and its atmosphere. 'Students make a conscious choice for a particular course, education here is small-scale with lots of contact time and practicals, and the courses are highly innovative', explains Frans Steenkamp, editor in chief of the Keuzegids. 
This year's guide only looks at Bachelor's courses. Besides the Agrotechnology BSC course, which got the highest grades for the second time, several other Wageningen courses score well. High on the list are Plant sciences, Molecular Life Sciences, and Soil, Water and Atmosphere. Successful studies
The second best university is the Open University. In third place is the University of Maastricht and in fourth place, the Technical University of Eindhoven, followed by the Radboud University of Nijmegen, which is declared the best of the 'broad traditional universities'.
The other large universities get considerably lower scores. The authors note that it is difficult to combine large size with high quality. They conclude that the keys to good education are small scale and high standards. 'Students seem to appreciate these things, and that leads to more successful studies for them.'
The guide to Master's courses comes out in January.
® AB, HOP