Press releases and news

UNLimited is the leading meeting of 2023 for everyone who works in, with and for universities.

As per December 1, 2022, Nettie Buitelaar started as managing director of Biotech Booster. Biotech Booster was awarded almost €250M by the National Growth Fund last April, to accelerate the translation of biotech knowledge to the market and society.

On 28 and 29 September 2023, Universities of the Netherlands will host the UNLimited Festival: a multidisciplinary gathering for everyone who works at, with and for universities.

The first Recognition and Rewards magazine is out now!

In the 2022 academic year, approximately 340,000 students are enrolled at a university. This is similar to the previous academic year, according to the provisional enrolment figures of the Universities of the Netherlands (UNL). While around 4,000 more students are enrolled in Bachelor’s programmes, there are around 4,000 fewer students enrolled at Master’s level. This makes the total number of enrolments roughly equal to last academic year. UNL President Pieter Duisenberg: ‘The stabilisation of student numbers at our universities gives us the space to use the substantial investments from the coalition agreement to get the fundamentals in order when it comes to workloads and more time for research. However, the expectation is that student numbers will continue to increase in the years ahead. In the future study with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, we will examine what this will require from universities and from measures taken by the ministry.’

Academics regularly face threats, harassment and hate speech. To address this issue, Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) are launching the platform WetenschapVeilig today. Academics who are being threatened or harassed can visit this website (www.wetenschapveilig.nl) 24 hours a day for help. UNL President Pieter Duisenberg: ‘Academics fulfil a crucial social function. It is unacceptable that they should have to face threats, harassment and hate speech in their work. This has an enormous impact on our people, and we view such threats as an attack on academic freedom. With the launch of WetenschapVeilig, we wish to support our academics as best as possible.’

The Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres (NFU), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) and each of the 14 individual universities sign the European ‘Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment’. This agreement between the European Commission, Science Europe and the European University Association (EUA) endorses the objectives of the national Recognition & Rewards programme. The agreement contains arrangements about how research results must be assessed in order to enhance the quality and impact of the research, but also ensure integrity. In addition, attention is explicitly given to recognising and rewarding academics for the various tasks they perform. In total, 350 organisations from more than 40 countries have indicated that they will sign the agreement. ZonMw also intends to sign.

Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) and the Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres (NFU) have joined forces to present an ambition statement for animal-free innovations in academic education.

Universities of the Netherlands is working on various projects, together with the Interuniversity Committee for Teacher Training (Interuniversitaire Commissie Lerarenopleidingen, ICL) and partners in the field of education, to train more academically trained teachers and make sure they stay in this profession.