In the 2019 edition of the annual Keuzegids for applied sciences universities in the Netherlands, NHL Stenden and the Hanze University of Applied are in shared third place among the 12 largest HBO schools in the country.
Omrop Fryslân reports that NHL and Stenden officially merged this academic year, and ranked 5th and 7th respectively on their own. Jan van Iersel from the board of directors at NHL Stenden told the Leeuwarder Courant that the schools is extremely proud of school’s performance in the guide.
Both schools had around 11,000 students prior to the merger. NHL was founded in 1987 and Stenden was founded in 2008, following another merger of two other northern academic institutions: Hogeschool Drenthe and Christelijke Hogeschool Nederland.
Top programmes
The Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen also came in third place last year. The guide identifies designates the best scoring programmes in the country as “top programmes”: around 11 percent of programmes achieve the title. The Hanze, which also has locations in Amsterdam and Assen, had 15 top programmes. NHL Stenden had nine top programmes across its locations in Friesland, Drenthe and Groningen.
The Keuzegids rankings are determined based on student satisfaction, accreditations and the number of students who successfully complete their degree. The guide analyses 1,170 HBO-level academic programmes in the Netherlands and gives a qualitative comparison among similar programmes. The guide also looks at the likelihood of finding a job for programme graduates, who many students drop out and complete their degree and admissions standards.
