Academics satisfied with Tilburg University, students not
A striking discrepancy in the results of the ‘best studies 2012’, the annual research by weekly magazine Elsevier and research institute ResearchNed on the quality of higher education. Professors and associate professors think that Tilburg University is the best specialist university within their profession. Students, however, are predominantly negative in their judgement. Only one of the twenty two studies in Tilburg gets a grade above average.
“Tilburg is at the bottom in the overall judgement of students”, says Ruud Deijkers, research editor at Elsevier and responsible for the ‘best studies’ research.
Students got questions on six different parts: overall satisfaction, quality of education, the set-up of the education, quality of teachers and organisation/communication.
How is it possible that Tilburg scores high among professors and low amongst students? Deijkers says: “Good question. The university should consider for itself how this is possible. I don’t know whether students from Tilburg are more critical. Professors were not allowed to vote for their own university. They judged on four criteria: quality of the bachelor programmes, quality of the teachers, the offer of master programmes and the quality of scientific publications by the staff.”
Asked for a response on the results and an explanation for the discrepancy in the judgements of professors and students, spokesman of Tilburg University Walther Verhoeven says: “We are proud of the fact that our university is again elected for best specialist university according to professors and associate professors. It is nice that colleagues from other universities grade us so high. As regard to the students’ judgement, I think that you should be careful to compare the judgements of two different populations on two different subjects. For example, the judgement of students from Tilburg on study X is compared with, for example, the judgement of students from Nijmegen on study Y. Those students can’t compare the two studies with each other, because they only know their own study.”
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