Photo Luuk Zegers
Over 289,000 students completed the National Student Survey (NSE) this year. Wageningen once again receives the best ratings of all the big universities on almost all criteria. Dean of Education Arnold Bregt: ‘A shoutout to all our teaching staff for their excellent education.’
One aspect sticks out, though, when Bregt checks out the results. ‘On the whole, the results of the NSE are very good. But it is a very large sample, so we always check whether we can discover trends through time. When you check out the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, there is a slight downward trend in how our bachelors are rated, even though the ratings are still high.
Although there is only a slight drop, Bregt intends to investigate the causes with the programme directors and the Board of Education. ‘I have an idea about the cause. Wageningen focuses on small-scale education on campus. After the covid pandemic, there is a slight decline in the presence of bachelor students on the campus and, thus, in the participation of young students in the first two years. For courses with, for example, thirty registrations, sometimes no more than fifteen students show up for class. If you fail to attend lectures, there is less interaction and, subsequently, less appreciation for the programme. However, this is just a theory; we will investigate.’
Bregt wants to work with the Board of Education and the programme directors to identify possible measures to increase attendance among students on the campus. Masters’ students show a higher attendance, so there is no issue among this group.
Pressure
A noteworthy issue is that students experience high study pressure. At a national level, 33.2 per cent of the students indicate that the study pressure is “too high”, and 5.7 per cent even qualify it as “much too high”. Study pressure among students in Wageningen is lower than the national average. 24.4 per cent rate the pressure as “too high”, while 2.7 per cent feel their study pressure is “much too high”. However, the perceived study pressure has lowered from last year.
Check out more results and compare programmes and institutes on the NSE dashboard here.
