The kick-off of the academic year at TU/e is just around the corner. This academic year will start with far fewer pre-master’s students than the university had expected.
Pre-masters prepare students for a master’s programme. It is intended for students who have obtained their bachelor’s degree at a university of applied sciences. Two years ago, about four hundred students followed such a pre-master programme. Two years later that number has fallen to around one hundred students, according to Cursor , the official news website of TU/e.
Last year, the number of students taking a pre-master’s course had already halved. At TU/e, that number was expected to stabilise. However, this year also saw a halving.
Language and Mathematics
The Dean of the graduate school (the superstructure of the university, where the master’s programs and the PhD programs are located, ed.), Paul Koenraad, thinks he knows what the problem is. A language test and a mathematics test have been introduced. The applied sciences students must pass these before they can start the pre-master. “We have introduced both these tests to increase the chances of success for the pre-masters”, says Koenraad.
“At Computer Science, where these entry requirements were introduced much earlier, we have seen that the numbers first decrease and then go up again and that the returns of this group have increased significantly. The students who start are therefore also the qualitatively better students. This is how selection mechanism works”.
Other causes
In addition, Koenraad does not rule out the possibility that there are other causes for the decline in the number of registrations. ”We cannot rule out that the current overstrained labour market also has something to do with it. Graduates of higher professional education can now easily find a job and so they decide not to spend more years at university”.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Shanthi Ramani
