Choice Overload

On our way to family my wife and I had some spare time at a railway station and we decided to have a coffee at Starbucks. Just a coffee at Starbucks turned out to be impossible. You have to choose what beans your want for your coffee, whether it should be blond, medium or dark roast, what size you want, with what kind of milk, what shot you want to have added and so forth. Any idea what the differences are between Iced Skinny Flavoured Latte, Flavoured Latte, Skinny Flavoured Latte, Iced Flavoured Latte or between Coffee Frappucino Blended Beverage, Coffee Frappuccino Light Blended Beverage, Espresso Frappuccino Blended Coffee and Espresso Frappuccino Light Blended Coffee? And you can still add a shot of syrup!

I heard that some executives would like to see such a coffee seller on our campus. My fear is that this would lead to an enormous increase to student stress given the overload of choices they have to make, during their studies and even before they start their program. Tilburg University offers more than 30 bachelor programs, how can we expect a prospective student to make the right choice? The university is currently working on a new strategy for 2020. One of the suggestions I made is to minimize our bachelor education. Each school should offer only one bachelor program! Provide students with a wide variety of education in the first three years in a broader bachelor program. Hardly any employer understands the differences between all these bachelor programs. Specialization is for the Master phase.

If the university decides not to go ahead with this suggestion, then here is another one. I suggest that one of the schools should start new bachelor program: The Legal, Economic, Social and Human implications of the Art of Coffee Making.

Hans-Georg van Liempd is program manager internationalisation at TiU and president of EAIE. He blogs for Univers.