For first-year Mechanical Engineering students, a lot was at stake on Wednesday, June 10. After months of hard work, they were ready: around 700 students, divided over 112 teams with their ‘mechanical boulderer’ at the starting line. Which revolutionary machine will reach the top first? “I’m now at 28 seconds!”
For the first time in twenty years, the number of international students in the Netherlands has fallen slightly, according to the internationalisation organisation Nuffic. Students from Germany and China, in particular, are staying away.
Fewer and fewer students report experiencing excessive academic pressure, according to the National Student Survey. In addition, three-quarters of them are generally satisfied with their study programme. TU Delft students are, on average, slightly more satisfied with their study programme than the national average.
Breathing more calmly and relaxing through a game. According to students of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, it should be possible with the game they developed: Breath of the Bow.
The government wants to reach agreements with universities of applied sciences and research universities to curb the number of international bachelor’s students. But without a language test, the minister has few enforcement mechanisms.
Higher education institutions will receive hundreds of millions of euros in extra funding for research, innovation and the recruitment of international students. Meanwhile, the basic grant for students living away from home will go up by 50 euros – if the government gets its way, that is.
The House of Representatives is calling on the government to engage in discussions with universities and universities of applied sciences regarding the binding study advice (BSA) and to investigate whether it can be replaced by ‘personal advice’. Previous research has shown that the BSA has significant drawbacks.
Some TU Delft teachers fear that AI is steadily eroding their students’ critical thinking skills. The worst-case scenario: an entire generation of engineers with poor analytical skills. How are instructors trying to turn the tide?
The Education Inspectorate has once again warned that neither the NVAO, the higher education accreditation body, nor the Inspectorate itself can intervene at any stage if the quality of teaching on a course goes wrong. The examination boards only partially make up for this shortcoming.
