Senior management to revise expectations
Translated by Thomas Ansell
The number of students at the University of Groningen’s Campus Fryslân are ‘much lower’ than expected- and senior management at the campus think that the forecasts won’t be reached in the future. Thus, the campus is working on an update to managed expectations and ambitions, said Director of Business Operations Piet Bouma, according to the Friesch Dagblad.
In the current academic year, Campus Fryslân attracted 157 students, up from 140 the previous year. However, the expectation was for over 460 new students this year, about three times as much. The total number of students in all types of study at the campus is 197; significantly smaller than the expected 630.
The intake of bachelors students within the new, broad, and forward looking courses has doubled: from 26 to 53, but internal forecasts had expected the number to treble. Within the new group of students, ten are Frisian, which is an increase on the previous year’s total of seven.
This year will see 114 master’s students attend; up from 104 last year. Management at the campus called this ‘disappointingly low’, and only the MA in Sustainable Entrepreneurship has come anywhere close to matching its forecasts. The Msc in Environmental and Energy Management has also come close to reaching the predicted numbers of students, but this is a course that is managed by the University of Twente.
Reacting to the general number of master’s students, the management team at Campus Fryslân said that the previous expectations showed ‘a too-high level of ambition’. “We hope, in the future, to no longer have an average of 40 incoming masters students. We are busy making new forecasts, and formulating new ambitions”, said Bouma.