Elsevier made this announcement in today’s edition of the weekly. The magazine no longer publishes a ranking of the best universities and universities of applied science, so there are no “winners”.
The Christelijke Hogeschool Ede scores gold medals for five of its bachelor programmes. Wageningen is awarded three gold medals for bachelor programmes and five for masters’ programmes. Private university of applied sciences Tio also received eight gold medals, distributed among its locations in Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Hengelo and Utrecht.
Survey
The awards are based on the assessments of students in the National Student Survey. Journalists work with research agency ResearchNed to see what students consider the best programmes (links to Dutch content). The weekly took the answers to eleven questions into account, including questions on students’ satisfaction with the content, teachers, examinations and general atmosphere.
A programme is awarded a gold medal if at least eight questions score significantly above average, which means they must score higher than similar programmes in their domain across the board.
The Wageningen ‘gold’ bachelor programmes are Business and Consumer Sciences, Forest and Nature Management and Plant Sciences. The five master’s programmes that were laureated are Development and Rural Innovation, Geo-Information Science, International Land and Water Management, Nutrition & Health, and Tourism, Society and Environment.
In addition to gold medals, Elsevier also bestows silver (six or seven questions above average) and bronze (four or five above average) medals.