Who we are and what we want to achieve
At Radboud University, we have a broad and strong educational portfolio, developed and rooted within the faculties. This has led to quality and variety. Thanks to our broad academic scope, we can approach complex issues from different perspectives, for example in the areas of technological and socio-cultural developments, climate change and maintaining access to healthcare. In this way, we equip students with the integrated perspective and up-to-date knowledge that society and the labour market need today.
In the coming years, we will allow students to benefit more from this broad approach by bringing them into contact with multiple disciplines. We stimulate their curiosity, encourage independence and train autonomous, critical thinkers and doers. To achieve this, we are working towards greater collaboration in our educational organisation, so that our programmes are attractive and easy to study for new generations of students and workable for our lecturers.
Our goal: A future-oriented, high-quality range of courses that meets the needs of our students, the labour market and our core values. We offer multidisciplinary opportunities that are closely aligned with our groundbreaking research and prepare students for their careers. Our education encourages students to study without delay, while keeping the workload for lecturers manageable. We achieve a stable intake of students with targeted international growth.
What is needed to achieve this
Educational portfolio and teaching methods of the future
We are working on a flexible, cross-faculty programme that allows students to take full advantage of our academic breadth; a programme rooted in our disciplines and with a strong focus on academic skills. Every student will have the opportunity to become acquainted with more than one discipline, or to combine different disciplines within the programme. In this way, students will learn to speak more than one scientific “language” during their studies – a skill that will serve them well in their future (scientific) careers. We also encourage interdisciplinarity by developing broad bachelor's programmes with a wide range of options and thematic study tracks. By study tracks, we mean thematic and coherent educational programmes within a study programme, in which students delve into a specific subject or social challenge, such as sustainability or digitisation.
We continue to innovate our teaching methods and improve the quality of education by investing in the professional development of our lecturers, digital learning pathways, personalised assessment and a greater role for peer review. All students are trained to be AI literate: they acquire critical thinking skills to understand the technology and its possible applications, while at the same time being aware of its limitations, ethical issues and the environmental impact of digitisation. Sustainability is also woven into every programme, so that students learn to discuss sustainability issues from their own discipline, analyse them critically, and propose and implement solutions; they become “sustainability literate”.
Collaboration in our educational organisation
A broad-based university recognises both the strength of diversity and the challenge of complexity. In order to facilitate the educational portfolio of the future, we will be working towards greater unity in our educational organisation in the coming years: harmonisation of matters such as course information, programme structure, timetables, assessment methods, choice options and credit scoring offers opportunities for interchangeability and flexibility. We are making it easier to combine and switch between disciplines. This promotes collaboration, knowledge exchange and the efficient use of resources – and, more importantly, it improves both the student experience and the quality and sustainability of our educational offerings.
Studyability and teachability
A university programme is not only an individual challenge, but also a formative group experience – in which the group can function as a home base. Within that group, students support each other and encourage each other to make their own choices. We are committed to preventing dropouts and study delays by improving the structure and coherence of programmes, optimising course structures and study tracks, reviewing assessment methods and assessment moments, and combining mentorship with team-based learning. We are exploring possibilities for a broader first bachelor's year, in which students only choose a specific direction in year two or three. We are also looking at how the range of courses on offer can be optimised, for example by combining or avoiding similar courses offered by multiple faculties. This allows us to keep the range of choices broad, reduce costs and ease the workload for lecturers.
Stimulating enrolment
We invest in better and more intensive study choice information and strengthen ties with secondary schools in the region and beyond, so that pupils can make an informed choice and get to know Radboud at an early stage. We also capitalise on Nijmegen's appeal as a warm, welcoming student city, combined with the quality of our person-centred education and our group-oriented guidance.
For Master's programmes, we focus on offering attractive and innovative programmes to our own Bachelor's students, facilitating the transition from higher professional education to university education, and positioning Radboud as the logical next step for talented students from all over the Netherlands. At the same time, we encourage international enrolment through targeted (online) campaigns, platforms and collaboration with our agents. Where possible, we are expanding the number of English-language programmes and strengthening our international profile, while striving to create more student housing on and around campus.