Positive evaluation of performance agreements

In 2012, all Dutch universities and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science entered into a global agreement geared towards improving and raising the profile of their education, research and knowledge valorisation activities. Over the past four years, Erasmus University has worked hard to realise a number of concrete ambitions in these areas. Among other things, the organisation focused on improving students’ performance, the further internationalisation of EUR’s education programmes and strengthening top-level research groups.

Positive evaluation
Minister Bussemaker has presently concluded that Erasmus University succeeded in achieving its performance agreements. With this evaluation, she subscribes to the positive final advice issued by Reviewcommissie Hoger Onderwijs en Onderzoek (Higher Education and Research Review Committee). 

According to this committee, Erasmus University has gone beyond simply realising the formulated ambitions. The committee specifically appreciates “the pioneering role that EUR has fulfilled at the national level in the introduction of ‘nominal=normal’ educational system and the opportunities this creates to improve the quality of its educational offer (small-scale, activating and intensifying education programmes) and students’ performance.”

The key results:

• Strong improvement of students’ performance: broad implementation of activating education, 80% of the students presently obtain their bachelor degree within the space of four years (5% more than the agreed target figure).
• Research: selection of top-level research groups, which have been strengthened with an extra  40 million euro in funding.
• Further expansion of EUR’s honours programme, increasing the share of students reached by these educational opportunities from 1% to over 8%.
• Added value of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus alliance: nine active centres, numerous education initiatives and a number of major international grants awarded to the alliance partners.
• Valorisation policy: establishment of the Erasmus Centre for Valorisation, and valorisation has been incorporated in the university’s HRM policy.
• Strengthening of EUR’s relationship with the city of Rotterdam: among other things, via the joint brand alliance ‘Make it happen’, six active knowledge workshops and collaborations with Codarts and the Willem de Kooning Academy.

President of the Executive Board Kristel Baele: “Our realisation of the performance agreements is a wonderful accomplishment – one that we can be duly proud of. The Executive Board has tremendous appreciation for the hard work put in by all our staff members to improve our education, research and transfer of knowledge even further. This has laid an excellent foundation for further improvements, for example in the digitisation of our educational offer, or the introduction of the Erasmus Initiatives: three new multidisciplinary research programmes.”

Click here to review the EUR performance agreements (PDF, page 17 of the Annual Report)